Bronze Ritual Bell (1226): Art, History and Details
Bronze Ritual Bell at the Cleveland Museum of Art: 1226, cast bronze with incised inscription. Explore the work's context, creator attribution and collection history.
Bronze Ritual Bell (1226) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.
The work and its context
The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:
This miniature bell was once used as part of Buddhist indoor rituals. Likely suspended in a Buddhist temple, it features a cast dragon and a vertical tube to amplify the sound on top, and is decorated with Buddhist figures seated on lotuses. The echoing sound of the bell was thought to help Buddhist believers understand the significance of transience and impermanence; the sound instantly fades away as soon as one hears it. This sensory experience creates a striking conceptual parallel with Buddhist teachings, including the idea that all things and beings exist merely in our perception or imagination. An inscription indicates it was cast in the year of the dragon and took three years to make.
Object facts
- Title: Bronze Ritual Bell
- Date: 1226
- Culture: Korea, Goryeo dynasty (918–1392)
- Type: Metalwork
- Technique: cast bronze with incised inscription
- Dimensions: Diameter: 14 cm (5 1/2 in.); Overall: 22.6 cm (8 7/8 in.)
- Collection: Korean Art
- Department: Korean Art
- Accession number: 1992.118
A detail from the museum
The inscription informs us that this miniature indoor bell was produced in 1226.
Collection credit
John L. Severance Fund
Further reading listed by the museum
- Turner, Evan H. “The Year in Review for 1992.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 80, no. 2 (February 1993): 38–79.
- Cleveland Museum of Art, and Michael R. Cunningham. Masterworks of Asian Art. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art; New York: Thames and Hudson, 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.
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