The Forbidden City Hidden in Mirror and Comb: A Comb, Half a History of Craftsmanship
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Every time I push open the wooden door of the Forbidden City's cultural relic restoration room, a unique fragrance always greets me — the blend of old wood and beeswax. Later, when I ran my fingers over this Forbidden City portable mirror and comb set, I unexpectedly detected a similar scent. It suddenly dawned on me that true craftsmanship never needs deliberate display; it resides in the grain of wood, the luster of enamel, and those invisible details.
The comb's handle comes from aged boxwood in the mountainous regions of Anhui. This slow-growing wood takes fifty years of wind and rain to mature, with a texture as delicate as solidified moonlight. An elderly carpenter from the Forbidden City once said, "Good wood has memory; it remembers the temperature of every polish." The handle of this comb undergoes seventeen rounds of hand polishing, using sandpaper finer than silk in the final stages — which is why it feels as smooth as a baby's skin to the touch. The arrangement of the comb teeth holds subtle ingenuity: the distance between each pair is precise to the millimeter, avoiding hair pulling while effectively removing dust. This replicates the "smooth hair comb" craftsmanship of the Qing Dynasty's Imperial Workshop, once exclusively used by imperial concubines.
The mirror's frame conceals even more touching time codes. Its antiqued finish isn't achieved through chemical staining but the traditional "wax rubbing method": beeswax is first melted by heat, then applied to the copper frame with in repeated strokes, followed by polishing with deerskin — a process repeated nine times to achieve this jade-like bronze hue. The interlocking lotus patterns on the frame are chiseled by artisans with knives, their finest lines measuring only 0.3 millimeters, thinner than an embroidery needle. It's said that to calibrate the pattern proportions, designers spent three months comparing with magnifying glasses against the Forbidden City Pattern Atlas, ensuring every petal's curve matches exactly those on the partition screens of the Hall of Mental Cultivation.
What makes this set most precious is how it brings endangered traditional crafts back into contemporary life. The 70-year-old master craftsman who creates the enamel comb backs has calluses deeper than the comb's patterns. He remarks, "Fewer young people want to learn this craft nowadays. Fortunately, products like this let enamel art step out of museums." The artisan responsible for carving the frames insists on using manual techniques over machines: "Machine-carved patterns are 'dead,'" he says. "Only the varying pressure of human hands can give lotus petals a sense of breath — just like the lotus flowers in the Imperial Garden, no two are ever identical."
Now I always take it with me when traveling. Combing wind-tousled hair on a gondola in Venice, the sea and cliff patterns on the comb back the Adriatic outside the window. Touching up makeup under cherry blossoms in Kyoto, the interlocking lotus in the mirror overlaps with falling petals to form a living painting. It's then that I understand: true cultural inheritance isn't about stubbornly clinging to tradition, but letting old crafts grow new wings to fly into broader horizons.
Perhaps we can't stop the passage of time, but we can own such a mirror and comb set — letting centuries of craftsmanship brush dust from our hair, and six hundred years of wisdom shine in our eyes. When fingertips glide over those hand-carved patterns, we're actually touching a nation's most precious memories.