Cylindrical Brushholder (1736–95 or later, mid-1800s?): Art, History and Details

Cylindrical Brushholder (1736–95 or later, mid-1800s?) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

The brush holder shows children celebrating seasonal festivals, pursuing games, and masquerading as adults with attributes that suggest their future careers in the military or civil service. Three boys play in the shadow of a garden rock with cricket cages; others parade a boy on a goat who wears the headgear of a scholar who passed first in the state examinations. Left to the goat kneels a boy who is about to ignite fire crackers lined up on a stone, a custom to celebrate the New Year. Moreover, the combinations of motifs form puns that express auspicious wishes.

Object facts

• Title: Cylindrical Brushholder
• Date: 1736–95 or later, mid-1800s?
• Culture: China, Qing dynasty (1644–1911), Qianlong reign (1736–95)
• Type: Ceramic
• Technique: porcelain
• Dimensions: Diameter: 9.3 cm (3 11/16 in.); Overall: 11.5 cm (4 1/2 in.)
• Collection: China - Qing Dynasty
• Department: Chinese Art
• Accession number: 1944.178

Collection credit

Elisabeth Severance Prentiss Collection

Further reading listed by the museum

• Catalogue of the Elisabeth Severance Prentiss collection : bequest of Elisabeth Severance Prentiss, 1944. [Cleveland]: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1944.
• Hollis, Howard. “Chinese and Korean Ceramics: Japanese Lacquer.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 31, no. 6 (1944): 103–100.

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.