Mirror

Bronze mirrors like this one were common in China for millennia before the introduction of glass mirrors from the West. They are usually round and have highly polished faces. The rear often had relief decorations as well as a central boss with a hole for a cord to be strung through for hanging. Although they could be used to look at oneself, such mirrors also had important symbolic and ritual functions.

The back of this mirror has a complex design of dragons against a floral pattern. The dragons, pursuing flaming pearls, seem to chase each other around the square center. This combination of circle and square is a symbol of great antiquity, usually given cosmological significance: the circle symbolizes the round dome of the sky; the square, the earth with its four directions.

The square center is inscribed with the date of the fourth year of Zhìyuán (至元四年), a period in the Yuan dynasty (1271–1368) that lasted from January 21,1338, to February 8, 1339. This was during the reign of Toghon Temür, the last Mongol emperor of China, who was overthrown in 1368.