Dining Bowl with Clematis (1893–97): Art, History and Details

Dining Bowl with Clematis (1893–97) 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 bowl is an especially well-executed example of Yohei III’s work in underglaze blue combined with other underglaze colors. This low-profile dining bowl has paintings of flowering clematis vines under the glaze in blue and red. Water is depicted with blue in the bottom of the bowl. The lines of white used to show motion on the water’s surface were created using either a reserve technique, where blue was omitted, or a masking technique, where parts of the surface were covered before applying the blue. A pair of butterflies flutters across one side. The foot is decorated with a pattern of spirals in blue, and the lip curves in slightly. The overall effect is one of seeing the flowering vine hanging down, hovering just above the surface of a pond, whose slight disturbances hint at unseen fish swimming below.

Object facts

• Title: Dining Bowl with Clematis
• Date: 1893–97
• Creator attribution: Seifū Yohei III (Japanese, 1851–1914)
• Culture: Japan, Meiji period (1868–1912)
• Type: Ceramic
• Technique: Porcelain with underglaze and overglaze colors, molded and incised designs
• Dimensions: height: 6.9 cm (2 11/16 in.); Diameter: 19 cm (7 1/2 in.)
• Collection: Japanese Art
• Department: Japanese Art
• Accession number: 2022.156

A detail from the museum

This bowl shows an environment painted in the round.

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.

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.