WARRING STATES PERIOD (475-221 BC)

This superbly cast and well-preserved mirror belongs to a distinctive group of fine mirrors associated with the state of Chu (c. 1030-223 BC) which, in its heyday, governed territory from the Eastern Sea to middle Yangzi region in south-central China. The group features large slanted shan (mountain) motifs executed in plain broad bands arranged symmetrically around a central, fluted loop enclosed within a plain broad square. The plain-band central square and shan motifs, as well as the plain outer band, contrast dramatically with the intricate, textile-derived feathering pattern of the background. On such mirrors, the shan motif may appear as few as three or as many as seven times around the central loop. While the intended meaning of the shan-shaped motif on such mirrors is unknown, it most likely had auspicious significance.

A four-shan mirror of smaller size (11.7 cm.) in the Freer Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., is illustrated by J. K. Murray in A Decade of Discovery, Selected Acquisitions, 1970-1980, Washington, D. C., 1969, pp. 18-9, and another smaller example (10.4 cm.) is in The Cleveland Museum of Art, acc. no. 1995.281. A mirror of larger size (18 cm.), featuring three shan motifs alternating with leaping deer, is illustrated by C. von Spee in the exhibition catalogue, China’s Southern Paradise: Treasures from the Lower Yangzi Delta, Cleveland, 2023, p. 102, no. 10. See, also, the five-shan mirror sold at Christie’s New York, The Sze Yuan Tang Archaic Bronzes from the Anthony Hardy Collection, 16 September 2010, lot 909, and the six-shan mirror sold at Christie’s Hong Kong, 28 May 2021, lot 3013.