Mirror with Phoenixes, Birds, Butterflies, and Floral Sprays
700s
- Medium
- bronze with silver and gold inlaid lacquer
- Classification
- Metalwork
- Dimensions
- Diameter: 19.2 cm (7 9/16 in.)
- Culture
- China, Tang dynasty (618-907)
- Museum
- Cleveland Museum of Art, Chinese Art
- Credit line
- Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Little Ones profiles and older: it shows gentle subjects for the very young. How works are placed
View at the Cleveland Museum of Art
About this work
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.
