Bowl with Numinous Fungi and Kirin (1893–1900): Art, History and Details

Bowl with Numinous Fungi and Kirin (1893–1900) 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:

The complex design of this bowl is also technically sophisticated in its execution. On the interior, Yohei III has placed a mythical beast called a kirin (Chinese, qilin) within a double-banded circle painted in cobalt blue under the glaze. Around the interior of the mouth, bordered at top and bottom with underglaze blue under a brown iron oxide painted rim, he has painted a continuous coin pattern with a red wash and green color enamels. The pattern is further defined and embellished with black iron outlining the green- and gold-painted diamonds over the diluted red. The inside is otherwise left white. On the exterior, the body has a dark blue glaze and an overlaid silver design of reishi with incised lines for detail.

Object facts

• Title: Bowl with Numinous Fungi and Kirin
• Date: 1893–1900
• Creator attribution: Seifū Yohei III (Japanese, 1851–1914)
• Culture: Japan, Meiji period (1868–1912)
• Type: Ceramic
• Technique: Porcelain with cobalt blue glaze, overglaze color enamel, and silver painting overlay
• Dimensions: height: 8.3 cm (3 1/4 in.); Diameter: 18.3 cm (7 3/16 in.)
• Collection: Japanese Art
• Department: Japanese Art
• Accession number: 2022.241

A detail from the museum

Inside the bowl is an auspicious, mythical deerlike creature called kirin in Japanese (麒麟 or qilin in Chinese).

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.
• "Colours of Kyoto, Ceramics From the Yohei Studio." The Asian Art Newspaper: Monthly for Collectors, Dealers, Museums and Galleries 27, no. 1 (November 2023): 8

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.