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Gallery 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
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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.

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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, Fogg Art Museum (Cambridge, MA, 1975), cat. no. 524, p. 359

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