Bowl with Dragon Roundels (1897–1914): Art, History and Details

Bowl with Dragon Roundels (1897–1914) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Seifū Yohei III (Japanese, 1851–1914).

The work and its context

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

While this bowl has no box, it is attributed to Yohei III based in part on the style of the signature on its base. Below the rim, the bowl’s interior has a ring of clouds in underglaze blue. On the outside, bright yellow is combined with roundels of dragons capturing flaming jewels, painted under the glaze in blue, while the inside has a single dragon roundel in underglaze blue against a white ground. The work’s bold decorative scheme is more in keeping with what might be expected from the high-output studio of Miyagawa Kozan in Yokohama, whose products were designed for mass appeal. A similar bowl is in the collection of the Museum of Ceramic Art, Hyogo.

Object facts

• Title: Bowl with Dragon Roundels
• Date: 1897–1914
• Creator attribution: Seifū Yohei III (Japanese, 1851–1914)
• Culture: Japan, Meiji period (1868–1912)
• Type: Ceramic
• Technique: Porcelain with underglaze blue, iron oxide, and yellow glaze
• Dimensions: 8.1 x 18.2 cm (3 3/16 x 7 3/16 in.)
• Collection: Japanese Art
• Department: Japanese Art
• Accession number: 2022.237

A detail from the museum

Seifū Yohei III was inspired by the Chinese mythical animals and motifs with magical symbolism—including clouds and fungi—that were common on porcelain objects made at Jingdezhen in China during the Ming dynasty (1368–1644) and then exported around the world.

Collection credit

Gift of James and Christine Heusinger

Further reading listed by the museum

• Maezaki, Shinya and Sinéad Vilbar. Colors of Kyoto: The Seifū Yohei Ceramic Studio. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 2023.

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.