Bowl with Fish and Waves in Relief (1100s-1200s): Art, History and Details

Bowl with Fish and Waves in Relief (1100s-1200s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

As early as the seventh century, the practice of drinking tea and wine became an important part of elite leisure culture in Korea. A wide bowl like this example was especially suitable for drinking powdered tea shaved from a compressed tea cake, the most commonly enjoyed type during the Goryeo period. The image of fish swimming waves expressed in low relief on the inner wall of this tea bowl may have made the moment of drinking tea much enjoyable.

Object facts

• Title: Bowl with Fish and Waves in Relief
• Date: 1100s-1200s
• Culture: Korea, Goryeo dynasty (918–1392)
• Type: Ceramic
• Technique: celadon
• Dimensions: Overall: 6.3 cm (2 1/2 in.)
• Collection: Korean Art
• Department: Korean Art
• Accession number: 1918.445

A detail from the museum

This tea bowl was part of the gifts donated by John L. Severance (1863–1936). He and his father Louis H. Severance (1838–1913) collected Korean ceramics of the Goryeo dynasty (918–1392) from a number of pioneering medical missionaries as a way to foster their activities in Korea, and later donated them to the Cleveland Museum of Art.

Collection credit

Gift of John L. Severance

Further reading listed by the museum

• Jang, Nam-won. "The Tea and Celadons during the Goryeo Dynasty : Considering the Celadon Tea Utensils [고려시대 茶文化와 靑瓷]." Misulsa nondan (2007): 129-162.
• Goryeo Dynasty: Korea's Age of Enlightenment, 918-1392. San Francisco: Asian Art Museum, 2003.
• Goryeo: The Glory of Korea [대고려, 그 찬란한 도전]. Seoul: National Museum of Korea, 2018.

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.