Mirror with "TLV" Pattern (Eastern Han dynasty (25–220 CE), about 1st century): Artwork and History

Mirror with "TLV" Pattern (Eastern Han dynasty (25–220 CE), about 1st century) is in the Art Institute of Chicago collection. The museum lists its creator attribution as China.

The work and its context

The Art Institute of Chicago describes the work:

The design of this mirror reflects principles of ancient Chinese cosmology that envisioned a circular universe enclosing a square earth. Within the border of the square are characters denoting the twelve animals of the Chinese zodiac. The marks resembling T, L, and V correspond to patterns on an instrument used by Han dynasty diviners to foretell the future. This mirror was designed to place its owner at the center of the cosmos, a favorable position symbolically protected by the Animals of the Four Directions—the Green Dragon of the East, the Red Bird of the South, the White Tiger of the West, and the Black Warrior (tortoise and snake) of the North.

Object facts

• Title: Mirror with "TLV" Pattern
• Date: Eastern Han dynasty (25–220 CE), about 1st century
• Artist attribution: China
• Place of origin: China
• Medium: Bronze
• Dimensions: Diam.: 21 cm (8 1/4 in.); Thickness: D.: 0.5 cm (3/16 in.)
• Type: Metalwork
• Department: Arts of Asia
• Reference number: 1932.48

Collection credit

Samuel M. Nickerson Endowment

View the original

Explore the artwork in the Art Institute's collection, including its image and the museum's current catalogue details.

The description above is credited to the Art Institute of Chicago and reused under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0; HTML formatting has been converted to plain text. Other catalogue metadata and the public-domain image are provided under CC0 1.0.