Tong Cheng: The National Expo "A Thousand Autumns in the Mirror - Ancient Chinese Bronze Mirror Culture" exhibition tour

"A Thousand Autumns in the Mirror - Ancient Chinese Bronze Mirror Culture"

National Expo Exhibition Tour

Childish

At the National Museum, after visiting the exhibition hall of the "Ancient Chinese Numismatic Exhibition", you will see the exhibition hall of "A Thousand Autumns in the Mirror", as a lover of folk coins, you can't help but be attracted to the past and take a look.

Mirrors, from gold, actually sounded. The original meaning is to take pictures of the apparatus. Generally, it is made of the principle of light reflection, which can observe the image of the person, and now the common mirror is mostly made of glass plating with a reflective layer. Its word is gold, indicating that it was originally a metal product. Indeed, ancient mirrors are mostly cast in copper or iron, but also jade, disc-shaped, polished and shiny on the front, and decorated on the back. Nowadays, the bronze mirror has been used as a literary play and has become a collector's research object for enthusiasts.

The function of the mirror is summarized by Li Shimin: "With copper as a mirror, you can wear a crown; with history as a mirror, you can know the rise and fall; with people as a mirror, you can know right from wrong." Let's first look at the introduction of the culture of the bronze mirror.

Next, let's enjoy some bronze mirror exhibitions.

We then carefully admired several copper mirrors.

Neo-Mang Geometric Bo Pattern

Western Han Dynasty Tonghua with arc copper mirror

"Junyi Guan" inscription Deformed four-leaf Rui beast pattern bronze mirror Eastern Han Dynasty

Three Kingdoms - Southern Dynasty

"Bit to three gong" deformed four-leaf pair phoenix pattern copper mirror

Jin Dynasty double phoenix pattern copper mirror

Yuan Dynasty to the fourth year of the Yuan Dynasty Double Dragon Pattern Copper Mirror

Tang Dynasty Dajiming bronze mirror

Finally, let's talk about the correlation between copper mirrors and folk money.

Folk money, from the perspective of form, is in the same line with the use of money, so it is called money; from the content point of view, it is connected with most folk articles, so it is called folklore.

Wuzi Dengke Auspicious (Picture from the chief collection network, sincere thanks!) ）

Yuanyuan and the Fifth Fu Linmen (Picture from the Chief Collection Network, sincerely thank you!) ）

Kisei Takako Fukushou Shuangquan Fulu Shouki (Picture from the Chief Collection Network, sincere thanks!) ）

Folk culture has the characteristics of the times and locality. Folk culture products of the same era, whether ornamentation or composition, mostly have some commonalities. This has also become one of the bases for using products of a known era to discontinue other different types of products. Copper mirrors, porcelain, etc., have been studied for a long time, the characteristics of the times are more obvious, and their manufacturing age has basically been recognized, which is relatively easy to break in folk products. However, folk coins lack corresponding historical materials, and the study of generations is lagging behind, and it is often difficult to break generations.

Five men and two girls Baby drama (picture from the chief collection network, sincerely thank you!) ）

Yongtong Wanguo Pisces (Picture from the chief collection network, sincere thanks!) ）

Yuanshen Shuangfeng (Picture from the chief collection network, sincere thanks!) ）

Jinyu Mantang Double Dragon (Picture from the chief collection network, sincerely thank you!) ）

Because copper mirrors and folk coins are both copper products, and in a sense, they are all cultural products. Therefore, people often compare with the bronze mirror through ornamentation, text, material, etc., if the same, you can determine the upper limit of the minting age of folk coins, which is caused by the characteristics of the times such as fashion, values, and aesthetics. This article is only a little impression after the visit, selected a number of folk money with the same text and copper mirror text, similar ornamentation to appreciate, and did not conduct a specific comparative analysis of copper mirror and folk money, leaving it for further study to improve analysis ability later.

This article has been published by the author with the permission of the Music Club

Special thanks to the childlike gallop pinquan gongwei number