The Allure of the Mirror

Yanlong Guo's The Allure of the Mirror is a comprehensive and well-balanced study of the most popular art object from early China. Earlier scholarship on Chinese bronzes, including mirrors, has focused on “mass production,” but this book turns the table by focusing on “mass consumption.” Guo wisely uses transmitted texts, inscriptional materials (the bulk of the data analyzed), and art historical observation to examine the physical, social, economic, and semiotic entanglements between mirrors and their users in the Han empire. It is an invaluable contribution to the field of early Chinese art. -- Guolong Lai, professor of the humanities, Westlake University, Hangzhou From mine to marketplace to tomb, early Chinese bronze mirrors let us glimpse the aesthetic, economic, sociological, religious, and even philosophical discourses of their users; surviving by the thousands, they collectively form a robust database for exploring material and cultural values from two millennia ago. Yanlong Guo marshals hundreds of archeological reports, primary sources, and secondary studies to adeptly contextualize the early bronze mirror and here gives us its most thorough treatment to date. It will endure just as the mirror has. -- K. E. Brashier, Thomas Lamb Eliot Professor of Religion and Humanities, Emeritus, Reed College The Allure of the Mirror is a milestone in the study of the art of early imperial China. With encyclopedic command and razor-sharp insight, Guo examines the Han bronze mirror as a metallurgical artifact, an optical device, and a prism through which the full sweep of Han civilization—its politics, commerce, technology, and metaphysics—comes into view. His rigorous yet imaginative approach fuses classical textual analysis with cutting-edge material science, revealing the mirror as both an art object and an epistemological medium. Few have tackled this subject with such depth and dexterity; after this, no one likely will for some time. This definitive work will stand as the final word on Han mirrors for generations. -- Eugene Y. Wang, Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Professor of Asian Art, Harvard University