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Circular Mirror with Decoration of Linked Arcs, Quatrefoil, and Stylized Foliage, and with Inscription

Circular Mirror with Decoration of Linked Arcs, Quatrefoil, and Stylized Foliage, and with Inscription

Chinese

This circular mirror has a broad, raised, undecorated outer border. This gives way to a beveled edge that leads into a large, slightly sunken decorated field. There are short, radiating lines in thread relief that separate the designs within the decorative field. A long inscription raised in relief and arranged in a circle along the periphery of the field encircles inked arches in relief that surround a quatrefoil within a plain, undecorated ring. The knob is hemispherical. The reflecting side of the mirror has been polished clean of its patina.

Cast bronze

Han dynasty, Western Han period, 206 BCE-9 CE

Mirrors