The typical early Chinese mirror is a bronze disc with a faintly convex reflecting surface and cast decoration on the back; it has no handle, being held by a cord tied to a projecting loop in the centre of the back. Such mirrors were not common until about the 5th century bc, but far older examples are known. The earliest are four mirrors found in the tomb of Fu Hao at Anyang (c1200 bc) and two similar mirrors that come from sites of the Quia culture and might therefore be some centuries older still. The Fu Hao mirrors differ in decoration from other Shang bronzes, and this together with their resemblance to the Qijia specimens hints at a foreign origin for the Chinese mirror. Aside from a few undecorated Western Zhou examples, the next successors to the Fu Hao mirrors are four from Shangcunling dating from the 8th or 7th century. Two of these are undecorated and the third has decoration more or less Chinese, but the fourth, crudely decorated in thread relief, has parallels in the Ordos and Altai. A century or so later steppe influence is again to be detected in the decoration of round or square ‘double-plate’ mirrors, which are unusual in being constructed from a back plate of openwork decoration riveted or soldered to a separate reflecting part. By the Warring States period (5th-3rd centuries bc), however, mirrors were common and wholly Chinese in decoration. The decoration is usually cast but occasionally inlaid or painted in lacquer. Warring States mirrors are found especially often in Chu tombs; 5th century mirror moulds have been unearthed in the north, at Houma and Yan Xiadu. Dated, inscribed mirrors first appeared in the late Western Han period (1st century bc). The decoration of Han mirrors generally has a magical or cosmological significance.
The Macmillan dictionary of archaeology, Ruth D. Whitehouse, 1983Copied