Dish with Autumn Grasses and Rocks (late 1500s–early 1600s): Art, History and Details

Dish with Autumn Grasses and Rocks (late 1500s–early 1600s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

Mino ware is stoneware produced in the Mino area of present-day Gifu prefecture in central Japan. Works like this piece are called nezumi-shino, or “mouse-gray” Shino, after the glazing technique. The gray color and white design of grasses were achieved by applying an iron oxide slip to the surface and carving through it to the white clay, and then covering the whole surface in glaze and firing the object. In its design, this serving dish emulates Chinese ceramic prototypes, but its shape recalls wooden and lacquered trays commonly used in Japan at the time.

Object facts

• Title: Dish with Autumn Grasses and Rocks
• Date: late 1500s–early 1600s
• Culture: Japan, Momoyama period (1573-1615) to Edo period (1615-1858)
• Type: Ceramic
• Technique: Stoneware with underglaze iron oxide slip and incised designs (Mino ware, Shino type)
• Dimensions: Overall: 20 cm (7 7/8 in.)
• Collection: Japanese Art
• Department: Japanese Art
• Accession number: 1966.24

Collection credit

John L. Severance Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1966. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1966.
• Lerner, Martin. “Tea-Ceremony Pottery and Export Porcelain.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 54, no. 9 (November 1967): 267–278, 290–292B.
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1969. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1969.

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.