BRONZE BELL-SHAPED MIRROR
SOUTHERN SONG DYNASTY (1127 – 1279)
16.5 cm long, 12 cm wide
The bell-shaped mirror is heavily cast with an angular aperture at the top for suspension and on one side with a square seal flanked by two rows of seal-script characters forming an eight-character inscription, and a suspended, large loose-ring handle, all surrounded by a raised border. The front and back bear areas of green encrustation.
The eight-character inscription reads gu zhong yu gong, sheng wen yu wai, which can be translated as ‘The drum and bell are in the palace, their sound can be heard outside’. The square seal encloses the characters Li Daobing zao, ‘made by Li Daobing’.
Bronze mirrors of this particular shape are rare and were probably intended for funerary purposes rather than for daily use. A closely related example was excavated in Nanchang, Jiangxi province, and is currently in the collection of the Musée Cernuschi, Paris, illustrated in Michel Maucuer, Bronzes de la Chine Impériale, des Song aux Qin, Paris, 2013, pl. 115, p. 161. Compare two further examples illustrated in Zhang Daolai and Wei Quanlai, Shangdong minjiancanjing, 2006, pl. 263, p. 186.
Provenance:
Sotheby’s London, 1993
A Dutch private collection
Published:
Sotheby’s, Fine Chinese Ceramics, Bronzes, and Works of Art, London, 7 December 1993, lot 27