She also suspects institutions and other collectors of possessing magic mirrors without even realizing it. The piece was first recorded in the museum’s Asian art collection in 1961, although the curator believes it may have been acquired much earlier. The museum has yet to decipher whether it originated in China or Japan, although Song thinks it likely was the first. Measuring about 8.5 inches in diameter, the museum mirror was likely used as a religious decoration and may have hung in a temple or noble house. “No matter how much you can explain in theory, it all depends on the master polishing the surface which is very difficult,” she said. And while their optics are now widely understood, Song said experts still don’t know precisely how craftsmen use the metal. For more than a thousand years, a rare type of Chinese artifact has made scientists. Mirrors baffled Western scholars who encountered them in the nineteenth century. (Should the Cincinnati Museum of Art discover, a second metal plate would likely have been welded to the back, leaving the original inscribed Buddha statue hidden inside.) For this reason, they are known in Chinese as “transparent” or “light-piercing” mirrors. Curators Discover a Rare Chinese ‘Magic Mirror’One of Only Three Known in the Westin the Depths of the Cincinnati Art Museum’s Storage The magic mirror was for years believed simply to be an unassuming bronze disc. Drawing is done on the front side, and then covered with a special alloy of mercury and polished. When sunlight hits the reflective surface a certain way, a hidden image will be revealed – matching the design on the back – giving the illusion that the light is going straight through the mirror. A pattern is engraved on the mirror, then it is filled with bronze of a different kind and polished. A substance containing mercury was then used to create additional surface pressures that were invisible to the naked eye but match the elaborate patterns on the back, according to an article in the UNESCO Courier Journal. Since the plate was of varying thickness, due to the embossed design, the process made very slight changes in curvature on the side that seemed to be mirrored blank.
Scientists believe they scratched and scraped the plain surface on the other side, before polishing it so it was as reflective as a traditional mirror. To create the mystical effect, artisans began casting pictures, words, or patterns onto one side of a bronze plate.
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