Mirror with Phoenixes, Birds, Butterflies, and Floral Sprays (700s): Art, History and Details

Mirror with Phoenixes, Birds, Butterflies, and Floral Sprays (700s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the 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.

Object facts

• Title: Mirror with Phoenixes, Birds, Butterflies, and Floral Sprays
• Date: 700s
• Culture: China, Tang dynasty (618-907)
• Type: Metalwork
• Technique: bronze with silver and gold inlaid lacquer
• Dimensions: Diameter: 19.2 cm (7 9/16 in.)
• Collection: China - Tang Dynasty
• Department: Chinese Art
• Accession number: 1973.74

A detail from the museum

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

Collection credit

Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• "The Year in Review for 1973." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 61, no. 2 (1974): 31-78.
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1978. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1978.
• Cunningham, Michael R., Stanislaw J. Czuma, Anne E. Wardwell, and J. Keith Wilson. Masterworks of Asian Art. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1998.

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.