mirror

Cast circular brass mirror with a smooth reflective surface. The reverse side has a pierced hole on the flanged rim, for suspending with a brass wire hanger. At the centre of the mirror are two Chinese characters of double happiness, shuang xi, encircled by a ring, surrounded by five bats with heads facing towards these characters.There is a maker's mark within a rectangular frame at the bottom which reads 'geng tai he zuo', meaning 'made by geng tai he'.

When glass mirrors became common in the Qing dynasty, cast brass mirrors of this type were used as wedding gifts given to brides by their parents.

Collection Information

These objects are only a part of our collections, of which there are more than 350,000 objects. This information comes from our collections database. Some of this is incomplete and there may be errors. This part of the website is also still under construction, so there may be some fields repeated or incorrectly formatted information.

The database sometimes uses language taken from historical documents to help research, which may now appear outdated and even offensive. The database also includes information on objects that are considered secret or sacred by some communities.

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