A SILVER-BACKED PARCEL-GILT BRONZE 'ANIMALS AND BIRDS' OCTOFOIL MIRROR

The present mirror is decorated with lions, tigers and birds enclosed by a foliate scroll and with a boar-form loop handle. A slightly larger bronze and gilt-silver mirror decorated with a similar design was included in the exhibition Animals and Animal Designs in Chinese Art, Eskenazi, New York,1998, no. 17 and another slightly larger silver-backed mirror with six lions around the central knop, now in the Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Harvard University, and inscribed with a date equivalent to 682 – 683 AD beneath the silver backing, is illustrated in Grenville L. Winthrop: Retrospective for a Collector, Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, 1969, pp. 68-9, cat. no. 61.