Weiner Mihályné szerk.: Az Iparművészeti Múzeum Évkönyvei 9. (Budapest, 1966)

HOPP FERENC MÚZEUM — MUSÉE FERENC HOPP - Ferenczy, László: Chinese Bronze Mirrors from the Han Period

Fig. 4. Inscription mirror. China, Western Han period. also include small spirals and lines. The rim is even and thick. The mirror is broken in three pieces. The fractures clearly show on the reflecting side a 1 mm bronze plate of different material, perhaps for holding the pieces of the broken mirror together. There is a haircrack on the largest piece too, which could not be noticed but by the decoloration appearing at conservation. The mirror is of 10.1 cm in diameter and, in the middle, of 2 mm in thickness. The mirrors with the four S-shaped decorations are often named ssu-hui or ssu-ju mirrors. The pattern is described in different ways: Swallow calls it a small lizard, Milan Rupert, describing similar pieces of the Todd Collection belonging to the Han period, speaks about conventionalized lions, tigers, animals".

16 The two latter of his examples correspond to our piece. The Sianfu piece Nr. 420 was a „magic" mirror. Nr. 15 is a rare specimen of this type. It is much larger than the average (diam. 16.4 cm) and is surrounded, according to the description, with conventionalized tigers, dragon birds and other minor animals, which are unfortunately quite undistinguishable on the poor reproduction. Bulling treats such mirrors among the „mirrors with four serpents" and considers the double spirals as simplifications of snakes.

17 She believes this simplification to have taken place on these mirrors in the 1st century B.C. Mirrors of this kind were unearthed by recent Chinese excavations mainly at graves dating from the later Western Han period.

18 16 Milan Rupert, O. J. Todd: Chinese bronze mirrors. Peiping, 1935. No. 15, 34., 420. 17 Bulling : The decoration ... p. 26. PI. 19. 18 K'ao ku t'ung hsün. 1956. No. 1. p. 37.; Shansi-sheng chu-tu t'ung ching. PI. 51, 52; Kaogu. 1964. No. 8. pp. 393 — 402.