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Mirror

ca. 1850

Japanese

Featuring the auspicious combination of a mating pair of phoenixes among flowering paulownia trees around a central, tortoise-shaped handle, this unusually large mirror was most likely created for the wedding trousseau of an aristocratic woman. It is signed by Sadatsugu, an artist associated with the highly esteemed Nakajima Izumi-no-kami studio of bronze mirror makers located immediately southwest of the imperial palace in Kyoto. Sadatsugu and his brethren created mirrors for the most elite clients in Edo-period Japan, including members of the aristocracy and the Tokugawa shoguns.

Bronze

3/8 x 3/16 in. (0.95 x 0.48 cm)

Diam.: 14 1/2 in.

Eugene Fuller Memorial Collection

60.28

Not currently on view

Resources

Exhibition HistorySeattle, Washington, Seattle Art Museum, A Thousand Years of Beauty: Japanese Art in Seattle, July 16, 2001 - November 17, 2002.

Seattle, Washington, Seattle Art Museum, Deities & Demons: Supernatural in Japanese Art, October 20, 2022 – May 18, 2025 (on view December 7, 2024 – May 18, 2025).

Published ReferencesFuller, Richard E. "Japanese Art in the Seattle Art Museum: An Historical Sketch." Seattle, WA: Seattle Art Museum, 1960 ("Presented in commemoration of the Hundredth Anniversary of Diplomatic Relations between Japan and the United States of America"), no. 136

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