The Cleveland Museum of Art

Collection Online as of December 3, 2023

Mirror with Phoenixes, Birds, Butterflies, and Floral Sprays

金銀平脫花鳥鏡

700s

China, Tang dynasty

(618-907)

Bronze with silver and gold inlaid lacquer

Diameter: 19.2 cm (7 9/16 in.)

Leonard C. Hanna, Jr. Fund 1973.74

Location

239 Chinese Ceramics and Metalwork

Fun Fact

Mirrors like this have a polished side for viewing and a decorated side with a central knob for lifting.

Description

This extremely rare pingtuo mirror is coated with a lacquer base inlaid with paper-thin sheets of silver and gold. The decorative patterns, especially the floral arabesques and the phoenixes and birds holding branches in their mouths, have a pronounced Persian and Central Asian flavor. Luxury items like this had been used by the Tang emperor as diplomatic gifts. A similar example from the Japanese imperial collection of Emperor Shōmu was donated by Empress Kōmyō in 756 to the Shōsō-in repository of the Tōdai-ji Temple, Nara, Japan.

Provenance
?-1973
(Yamaoka Seibei, Kyoto, Japan, sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art)
1973-
The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
Citations
"The Year in Review for 1973." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 61, no. 2 (1974): 31-78. Mentioned: no. 185, pp. 31 and 79; Reproduced: no. 185, p. 65 www.jstor.org
The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1978. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1978. Reproduced: p. 333 archive.org
Cunningham, Michael R., Stanislaw J. Czuma, Anne E. Wardwell, and J. Keith Wilson. Masterworks of Asian Art. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1998. Reproduced: pp. 42-43
Chou, Ju-hsi. Circles of reflection: the Carter collection of Chinese bronze mirrors. Cleveland, Ohio: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2000. Reproduced: fig. 1, p. 1
Watt, James C. Y., and Prudence Oliver Harper. China: Dawn of a Golden Age, 200-750 AD. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2004. Reproduced: cat. no. 217, p. 322 libmma.contentdm.oclc.org
Yen, Chuan-Ying. "The Decorative Motifs on Tang Dynasty Mirrors." Cleveland Studies in the History of Art 9 (2005): 1-10. Mentioned and Reproduced: p. 5, fig. 8 www.jstor.org
Chung, Anita. "A Connoisseur's Eye, A Scholar's Mind: The Legacy of Sherman Lee." Orientations vol. 40, no. 5 (2009). Reproduced: p. 30, fig. 4
Exhibition history

Mirrors: Art and Symbol. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (July 3-November 18, 1984).

Circles of Reflection: The Carter Collection of Chinese Bronze Mirrors. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (September 17-November 26, 2000).

China: The Dawn of the Golden Age (200 - 750 AD). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY (organizer) (October 5, 2004-January 23, 2005).

Streams and Mountains Without End: Asian Art and the Legacy of Sherman E. Lee at the Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (June 27-August 23, 2009).

Source URL: https://www.clevelandart.org/art/1973.74