Basin with Inscribed Figures and Calligraphy (1100s–1200s): Art, History and Details

Basin with Inscribed Figures and Calligraphy (1100s–1200s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

This bronze basin may have been used for containing purified water. What makes this work charming is its intricate decoration done in silver inlay: the five-character, four-line poems interspersed among images of a child. The poems, which evoke the concept of nonattachment and nonduality, were written by Buddhist monks.

Object facts

• Title: Basin with Inscribed Figures and Calligraphy
• Date: 1100s–1200s
• Culture: Korea, Goryeo dynasty (918–1392)
• Type: Metalwork
• Technique: bronze
• Dimensions: Overall: 17 cm (6 11/16 in.); Diameter of mouth with rim: 21.7 cm (8 9/16 in.)
• Collection: Korean Art
• Department: Korean Art
• Accession number: 1985.112

A detail from the museum

A child, one of the main decorative elements for this basin, is possibly a young Buddhist pilgrim named Sudhana, who took a long spiritual journey to search for enlightenment.

Collection credit

Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Turner, Evan H. "The Year in Review for 1985." The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 73, no. 2 (1986): 26-71.
• Cunningham, Michael R., Stanislaw J. Czuma, Anne E. Wardwell, and J. Keith Wilson. Masterworks of Asian Art. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1998.
• Goryeo Dynasty: Korea's Age of Enlightenment, 918-1392. San Francisco: Asian Art Museum, 2003.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.