Collection record · Everyday wonders
Boat-Shaped Bowl with Plovers
The collection record classifies this work as ceramic. It is dated 1893–97. Recorded culture or place: Japan, Meiji period (1868–1912).
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A closer look at the details.
- Museum title
- Boat-Shaped Bowl with Plovers
- Date
- 1893–97
- Culture / origin
- Japan, Meiji period (1868–1912)
- Materials and technique
- Stoneware with crackled glaze and overglaze color enamel and gold
- Dimensions
- height: 5 cm (1 15/16 in.); length: 17 cm (6 11/16 in.); depth: 8.5 cm (3 3/8 in.)
- Artist / maker
- Seifū Yohei III (Japanese, 1851–1914)
- Museum
- The Cleveland Museum of Art
- Accession number
- 2022.183
FROM THE MUSEUM
In the museum’s words
The following description is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art’s original English record.
Overglaze color enamels create a seascape made complete by the bowl’s boat shape. The bowl’s form inserts a human presence into the scene, much in the way rusu mōyō is used in paintings to suggest people just out of view. Rusu mōyō is a pictorial device by which the presence of someone physically absent from an image is conveyed through the depiction of clothing or other items.
The inside of the bowl has a scene of plovers flying through the sky over a profusion of seaweed in sand below. In addition to the black, gray, and green of the overglaze elements, warm pink banding and mottling in the clay come through the glaze and are remarkably effective at suggesting the seashore.
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Text and image sources
The Cleveland Museum of Art · Gift of James and Christine Heusinger · CC0
The summary is based on public collection data. Refer to the museum’s latest record for the title, date and attribution.
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