There have been reports circulating on the Internet, to the effect that why are the ancient mirrors exhibited in the museum showing people on the back? This is because these mirrors are related to funerals or feng shui, so it is inappropriate to display them in the museum, which will cause visitors to be psychologically uncomfortable.
Xiao Yan wants to say that the above statement is completely wrong, not only misleading the reader and the audience, but also unfair to these ancient mirrors that are displayed in museums.
Tang, Sonata Screw Mirror
The idiom that a broken mirror is difficult to round is related to the material of the mirror
When it comes to the history of copper mirrors, it is actually very old, and mirrors have appeared since ancient times when copper mines were able to be mined to make various copper objects.
Mirrors were relatively rare before the Western Zhou Dynasty, and could only be enjoyed by nobles, but they began to gradually become popular after the Eastern Zhou Dynasty, and they were already very common in daily life during the Warring States period, and by the Han Dynasty it was already an important part of the living utensils.
The material of ancient mirrors is mostly bronze (a small amount is red copper, brass after the Ming Dynasty), and bronze comes from the alloys of copper, tin and lead.
The ancients have known for a long time that the higher the proportion of lead and tin in bronze, the harder the material, and the whiter the color of the metal itself (the higher the content of copper, the reddish and dull color). The copper mirror hopes that its color is as white as possible, so that it will look good after polishing, which is why the ancient mirrors are high lead and tin ratios.
Although a high lead-tin ratio can obtain a mirror with a good color, the bronze in this case, although hard and wear-resistant, is also very fragile. Even if it is a copper alloy, it accidentally falls to the ground, but it will shatter in response, the idiom
Broken mirrors are hard to round
That's to describe the situation.
The material of the copper mirror is metal, so it is very heavy, generally speaking, the diameter of 10 cm mirror, weighing about 600 to 800 grams, and more than 10 cm mirror is very common, is one of the bulky daily necessities.
The decorative pattern and style on the back of the mirror is the key, and the mirrors cast by each dynasty have their own habitual appearance. Jade box mirror Sui Chu, size diameter 15.2 cm
When the ancients used mirrors, there would be a slanted wooden shelf, and the mirror was placed on the shelf for use, and if the richer or nobles used lacquerware, the shelves were made of lacquerware.
In any case, this mirror thing is not something to take with you, it is placed on the table and the kang table as an auxiliary tool for cleaning up the appearance.
The back of the mirror usually has a protruding handle called the button, the mirror button, this button has a small hole to wear the rope, its intention is very simple, when you need to pick up the mirror, the back of the mirror button to wear the rope comes in handy, convenient to hold the fixation, so as not to accidentally break the mirror.
The back of the mirror is the focus which is evidence of the age of casting
The material of the mirror is bronze, and the material of the cast bronze mirror of each dynasty is similar, so it is impossible to judge the exact casting age from the material.
The front of the mirror is naturally polished and smooth, otherwise how to take it to look at people?
Interestingly, the ancient mirror size was not very large, and most of them did not exceed 20 centimeters in diameter. But it's not that the technology isn't in place to make a large mirror. Mainly because it is metal, very heavy, the larger the heavier, engaged in a huge mirror so heavy that it can not be moved at all, such a mirror also lost its due practicality.
But the size of the mirror is not large, used to illuminate people can not show the full picture, can only illuminate an eye nose only, in order to solve this problem, so the mirror surface of the ancient mirror is often polished into a slight convex mirror look, although this is a little deformed when illuminating people, but becomes a wide-angle mirror, can easily illuminate the entire face.
During the Tang Dynasty, the diamond-shaped moon palace mirror is now in the Zhejiang Provincial Museum
Of course, the bronze mirrors on display in the museum are all shown in the decorative pattern on the back, because the front of the mirror is not very good at all.
However, the decorative pattern and style on the back of the mirror is very critical, because the mirrors cast by each dynasty have their own habitual appearance.
For example, from the Warring States to the Han Dynasty, due to the shengxian thought (early religious form) of feathering Dengxian, it was customary to use cloud gas patterns with stars as decoration, and this kind of mirror was called a nebula mirror.
Han Dynasty Nebula Mirror
The late arrival of the Western Han Dynasty to the Eastern Han Dynasty is probably because the game (gambling) is very popular, so it is common to use the "six Bo" chessboard as a decoration, this mirror is called the Boju mirror, and the foreigner because there are 3 patterns on it are very similar to the English L, T, V these three letters, so it is also called LTV mirror.
Bo Bureau Mirror
In the Tang Dynasty, flower and bird patterns (known as Tang cao in Japanese) became popular, and the casting of mirrors was also more fancy, and it was common that the outer edge of Tang mirrors was no longer cast as round, but appeared petal-shaped, even square.
At this time, the typical Tang mirror is represented by an eight-petal sunflower bird mirror.
Tang Dynasty eight-petal sunflower flower bird pattern mirror
But at the same time, due to the prosperity of the Silk Road trade, a variety of foreign decorative patterns also began to appear, and the sea beast grape pattern mirror influenced by Central Asian culture was a famous mirror species in the Tang Dynasty.
Sea beast grape pattern mirror from The Tang Gaozong to the Wuzhou Period
After the Tang Dynasty, due to the progress of the casting process, the decorative patterns of copper mirrors became more and more complex, and the styles became more and more varied. But in any case, the mirrors of each era have a certain appearance and decorative patterns, which is the key factor in identifying copper mirrors, and it is also a point of appreciation for the beauty of copper mirrors.
Therefore, of course, the bronze mirrors exhibited in the museum are all shown in the decorative pattern on the back, and the front of the mirror is really not good to look at.
Because the front side used to look at the mirror is completely polished into a mirror smooth, after thousands of years, the original light can be seen on the front side has become black (tin oxidation) and green (copper oxidation) due to metal oxidation, and has long lost the function that the mirror itself should have.
Although the oxide layer can be polished off to restore the mirror to its luster, the function of the museum is to preserve the cultural relics, polishing the mirror is equivalent to peeling off a layer of skin of the mirror, which is an irretrievable physical damage to the cultural relics, so maintaining the original state is the best approach, which is one of the reasons why the museum does not show everyone the front of the mirror.
Therefore, the ancient bronze mirrors are all appreciated on the back, and have nothing to do with feng shui taboos! Please don't be misled!