Rosie Roti

Mirror with Concentric Circles and Linked Arcs, 1st century BC, Cleveland Museum of Art: Chinese Art

Inscription: Refine the copper to be pure and bright. Make it into a mirror to receive rightful decor. May it extend your life and remove misfortunes! [You are] coeval with the heaven above. Size: Diameter: 14.9 cm (5 7/8 in.); Overall: 1.1 cm (7/16 in.); Rim: 0.7 cm (¼ in.) Medium: bronze

Angel (fragment of the Baronci altarpiece), 1500, Raphael

Medium: oil,canvas

Mirror with the Image of Avalokitesvara, 1900, Cleveland Museum of Art: Korean Art

Mirrors, along with swords and jade, were among the most important symbols of power. It is thought that mirrors held power through their ability to catch and reflect light. This rare trapezoid-shaped example is engraved with an image of the bodhisattva Kwaneum, and was used as a part of Buddhist rituals. Size: Overall: 15.7 x 13 cm (6 3/16 x 5 1/8 in.) Medium: bronze with incised Buddhist designs

Vase in the form of Fish

This is the most spectacular of a small group of fish-form vessels, all representing the ‘bulti’-fish common in the Nile and a standard feature of Egyptian decorative art. It was found in a medium-sized private house at El-Amarna, buried under a plaster floor together with two glass jugs and some metal objects.

The body is core-built in blue glass with a matt finish, and is decorated with simple festoons in groups of three or four white lines followed by a yellow line. The tail decorations are in the same colors. The dorsal fin is composed of a series of heavy threads in the body (blue, white, yellow, and turquoise-blue). The front fins are each composed of one light and one darker blue thread. 

The front ventral fins are made from one white and one yellow thread each while the rear ventral fin is of turquoise-blue glass. A yellow thread outlines the mouth. The eyes are white opaque circles with the pupils represented by black thread loops. The fish is assembled from several fragments. 

Captain Kani Ichita, from the Series “Mirror of…, Kobayashi Kiyochika, 1895, Saint Louis Art Museum: Asian Art

Over The Waves by Setsuko Matsushima