Brush Holder with Bamboo and Landscape Design (1800s): Art, History and Details

Brush Holder with Bamboo and Landscape Design (1800s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

An 18th-century Korean collector Yu Man-joo (1755–1788) wrote that “spending money on luxury clothing, dishes, and decorations for the home is a waste, but acquiring fancy writing tools helps to develop elegant taste and high-mindedness.” Inspired by aesthetic discourses on elegance versus vulgarity in late Ming Chinese literature, Korean collectors in the late 1700s and 1800s strove to assemble objects that would display their intellect and sophisticated taste. Stationery objects in particular—printed books, finely crafted brushes, brush holders, ink stones, water droppers, stone wares with grayish-white crackled glazes as well as bronze vessels, and incense burners—were all objects that reflected pure and elegant taste.

Object facts

• Title: Brush Holder with Bamboo and Landscape Design
• Date: 1800s
• Culture: Korea, Joseon dynasty (1392–1910)
• Type: Wood
• Technique: carved bamboo
• Dimensions: Overall: 10.1 x 9 cm (4 x 3 9/16 in.)
• Collection: Korean Art
• Department: Korean Art
• Accession number: 1988.74

A detail from the museum

Stationery objects such as this brush holder were highly appreciated among scholars, not only for their function, but for their aesthetic.

Collection credit

John L. Severance Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• “The Year in Review for 1988.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 76, no. 2 (February 1989): 30–75.
• Joseon-Period Stationary Objects [朝鮮 時代 文房 諸具]. Seoul: National Museum of Korea, 1992.
• Yang Uisuk. Joseon ui mokgongye: bueoksegan gwa sarangbangui gimul [조선의 목공예: 부엌세간과 사랑방의 기물]. Seoul: Yenareu, 1994.

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.