http://www.loc.gov/mods/v3 http://www.loc.gov/standards/mods/v3/mods-3-2.xsd
mass consumption of fine things in the Han empire
xi, 362 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (some color); 24 cm.
"In Han China (202 B.C.E.-220 C.E.), few luxury objects were as widely coveted and consumed as bronze mirrors. The unprecedented and exponential growth of mirror consumption is evidenced by the abundance of specular metal discs dispersed across major museum collections in North America and excavated by Chinese archaeologists in recent decades. These mirrors, carrying diverse decorative and inscriptional patterns, were enjoyed by aristocrats and commoners alike. Mirrors Entangled , the first scholarly monograph on the bronze mirrors circulated across the early Chinese empire, foregrounds the seemingly trivial objects at center stage in Han society by revealing the physical, economic, and semiotic entanglements between mirrors and their users. I demonstrate that these specular discs were commodities acquired as personal possessions and gifts by people across different social classes. Reconstructing the lives and afterlives of Han mirrors, I argue that they embodied different dimensions of experience as intimate objects, bright discs, auspicious amulets, and funerary articles"--
Making mirrors -- Distributing mirrors -- Handling intimate mirrors -- Seeing in bright mirrors -- Inscribing auspicious mirrors -- Gifting precious mirrors -- Buying familiar mirrors -- Appendix. Typology and chronology of Han mirrors.
Includes bibliographical references and index.