Mirror with Interlacing Floral Motifs and Twelve Zodiac Animals (late 500s–early 600s): Art, History and Details

Mirror with Interlacing Floral Motifs and Twelve Zodiac Animals (late 500s–early 600s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

The design of this mirror consists of a central knob and a series of concentric circular bands. The innermost band contains an eight-word inscription, with phrasing typical of earlier mirrors found in the Sui and early Tang periods: The mirror's light shows the man inside. May you live a long life and [constantly] renew yourself. Floral branches interlace in the second band. The controlled undulation produces five segments. The third band is divided into twelve parts, which house the zodiac animals in the clockwise sequence: rat, ox, tiger, hare, dragon, snake, horse, sheep, monkey, cock, dog, and boar. A sunken ring of the well-known sawtooth design continues to be effective, before the undecorated rim sets the final enclosure.

Object facts

• Title: Mirror with Interlacing Floral Motifs and Twelve Zodiac Animals
• Date: late 500s–early 600s
• Culture: China, Sui dynasty (581-618)
• Type: Metalwork
• Technique: bronze
• Dimensions: Diameter: 15.4 cm (6 1/16 in.); Overall: 1.4 cm (9/16 in.); Rim: 0.5 cm (3/16 in.)
• Collection: China - Sui Dynasty
• Department: Chinese Art
• Accession number: 1995.336

Collection credit

Gift of Drs. Thomas and Martha Carter in Honor of Sherman E. Lee

Further reading listed by the museum

• Chou, Ju-hsi. Circles of reflection: the Carter collection of Chinese bronze mirrors. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2000.
• Delacour, Catherine. La Voie du Tao: un Autre Chemin de L'être : Galeries Nationales, Grand Palais, 29 Mars-5 Juillet 2010. Paris: Reunion des Musees Nationaux, 2010.
• Chung, Anita. Ai Weiwei: Circle of Animals/Zodiac Heads: July 27, 2013-January 26, 2014, the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2013.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.