A curator at the Cincinnati Art Museum uncovered a hidden treasure in the museum's collection. Hou-Mei Sung says a 21-centimeter bronze mirror thought to be from the 16th century had an unexpected feature. If you shine a light on it, it reflects a projected image of a Buddha.
Budda and who else? Figure just to his left knee?
ReplyDeleteIt's either his girlfriend or the ghost of Christmas Past.
DeleteShe’s the resdon buddah is always smiling
ReplyDeletelooks like a dog to me.
ReplyDeleteMagnificent! --nines
ReplyDeleteThese are well known. A Chinese invention, they have a cast image on one side and a mirror polished onto the other. When a sufficiently parallel light source (the sun, laser, etc) hits the mirror, the backside image is seen in the reflected light. The reflection won't be seen with light from an incandescent lamp, fire, etc. Shanghai's Fudan University recreated these and was selling them in the late 1990s. The cause of the image is interference cancelling, leading to light and dark parts of the reflected light, but the exact method of creating the interference pattern- which is thought to be a light-wavelength-thick variation in the surface of the mirror- is debated and may be the result of any of several processes rather than one unique method. It's easy enough to do, sort of; what's going on at the surface of the mirror as it interacts with the polishing process, and why, is -or was 20 or so years ago- still actively debated. Many of these mirrors are in Chinese museums; their creation dates back thousands of years. Search "Chinese Magic Mirror" for more fascinating information. The image shown is a rather poor example; good ones are almost photographic. Part of that may be due to using a slide projector as a light source; the beam is somewhat but not very parallel. Sunlight is always a good source of essentially parallel light.
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