1943.52.157: Mirror
MirrorsGallery Text
During the Warring States and Han periods, jades functioned not only as ritual and burial items, but also as objects of personal adornment for the living. Other luxury materials, such as gold, bronze, and glass began to be incorporated with jades with greater frequency.
Identification and Creation
- Object Number
- 1943.52.157
- Title
- Mirror
- Classification
- Mirrors
- Work Type
- mirror
- Date
- 20th-century pastiche using 3rd-2nd century BCE components
- Places
- Creation Place: East Asia, China
- Period
- Zhou dynasty, Warring States period, 475-221 BCE
- Culture
- Chinese
- Persistent Link
- https://hvrd.art/o/204090
Location
- Location
-
Level 1, Room 1740, Early Chinese Art, Arts of Ancient China from the Neolithic to the Bronze Age
Physical Descriptions
- Medium
- Nephrite jade and glass on back of a bronze mirror
- Dimensions
-
12.2 cm (4 13/16 in.)
412 g
Provenance
- Recorded Ownership History
- [C. T. Loo & Co., New York, December 7, 1933] sold; to Grenville L. Winthrop, New York (1933-1943), bequest; to Fogg Art Museum, 1943.
Published Text
- Catalogue
- Ancient Chinese Jades from the Grenville L. Winthrop Collection in the Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University
- Authors
- Max Loehr and Louisa G. Fitzgerald Huber
- Publisher
- Fogg Art Museum (Cambridge, MA, 1975)
Catalogue entry no. 524 by Max Loehr:
524 Bronze Mirror with Jade and Glass Décor
The bronze disk, whose once shiny, silvery reflecting face is now covered with a rough, variegated green crust of oxide, is decorated in a striking and unusual manner. In the center of three surrounding zones sits a convex knob of intense dark blue and white glass beads, with a circular stratified eye in the middle and six eccentric eyes moving in counter-clockwise fashion around it. The next zone is a flat, plain, largely discolored jade disk bounded by a narrow ring of gold. Then follows a wider disk consisting of less brilliant blue and white eye-beads set flush into a bed of glass paste of dull blue color; these eye-beads conform to a distinct pattern: six pairs of compound eyes in radial position define as many sectors between them; each of the sectors is filled with three eccentric eyes in triangular arrangement, suggesting a clockwise motion. The outer zone is a fluted and twisted “rope” ring of mottled pale green and yellowish, highly polished jade, the perimeter of which is encrusted with bronze oxide. The mirror is said to have come from Chin-ts’un, Lo-yang. Late Eastern Chou.
Seligman and Beck, while regarding this mirror as “the finest example know to date of the Chinese workers’ skill in applying polychrome glass decoration to metal,” expressed doubts as to whether the fluted jade ring was contemporary with, and from the beginning affixed to, the mirror. “Rope” rings of this kind were, however, current in late Eastern Chou, and the assemblage appears to be ancient.
Acquisition and Rights
- Credit Line
- Harvard Art Museums/Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Bequest of Grenville L. Winthrop
- Accession Year
- 1943
- Object Number
- 1943.52.157
- Division
- Asian and Mediterranean Art
- Contact
- am_asianmediterranean@harvard.edu
- Permissions
-
THIS WORK MAY NOT BE LENT BY THE TERMS OF ITS ACQUISITION TO THE HARVARD ART MUSEUMS.
The Harvard Art Museums encourage the use of images found on this website for personal, noncommercial use, including educational and scholarly purposes. To request a higher resolution file of this image, please submit an online request.
Publication History
- Dorothy W. Gillerman, ed., Grenville L. Winthrop: Retrospective for a Collector, exh. cat., Fogg Art Museum (Cambridge, 1969), no. 055, pp. 56-57
- Takayasu Higuchi, ed., Chugoku bijutsu, dai 4-kan (Chinese Art in Western Collections vol. 4: Bronze and Jade), Kodansha (Tokyo, Japan, 1973), pl. 80
- Max Loehr and Louisa G. Fitzgerald Huber, Ancient Chinese Jades from the Grenville L. Winthrop Collection in the Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University (Cambridge, MA, Fogg Art Museum, 1975)., cat. no. 524, p. 359
- Jenny So, Early Chinese Jades in the Harvard Art Museums (Cambridge, MA, 2019), pp. 36-37, fig. 2.10b; pp. 43-44, figs. 2.22-2.26; pp. 326-9, cat. 49
- Katherine Eremin, Angela Chang, and Ariel O'Connor, Jade in the Lab, Early Chinese jades in the Harvard Art Museums, Harvard Art Museum (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2019), Pages 28-47, Figure 2.10b, Page 37; Figure 2.22, Page 43; Figure 2.23, Page 43; Figure 2.24, Page 44; Figure 2.25, Page 44; Figure 2.26, Page 44
Exhibition History
- S427: Ancient Chinese Bronzes and Jades, Harvard University Art Museums, Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Cambridge, 10/20/1985 - 04/30/2008
- Re-View: S228-230 Arts of Asia, Harvard Art Museums/Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Cambridge, 05/31/2008 - 06/01/2013
- 32Q: 1740 Early China I, Harvard Art Museums, 11/16/2014 - 01/01/2050
Subjects and Contexts
- ReFrame
- Google Art Project
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Verification Level
This record has been reviewed by the curatorial staff but may be incomplete. Our records are frequently revised and enhanced. For more information please contact the Division of Asian and Mediterranean Art at am_asianmediterranean@harvard.edu