Dish with Figures in a Chinese Garden (1700s): Art, History and Details

Dish with Figures in a Chinese Garden (1700s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

This dish is inscribed with a poem from The Gateless Gate, a text compiled by Chinese Chan (Zen) master Wumen Huikai (1183–1260). The verse reads, “I always remember the spring in Jiangnan. Where the partridges sing; how fragrant the countless flowers!”

Object facts

• Title: Dish with Figures in a Chinese Garden
• Date: 1700s
• Culture: Japan, Edo period (1615–1868)
• Type: Ceramic
• Technique: Porcelain with underglaze blue and overglaze color enamel and gold, with iron oxide rim (Arita ware)
• Dimensions: height: 3.2 cm (1 1/4 in.); Diameter: 21 cm (8 1/4 in.)
• Collection: Japanese Art
• Department: Japanese Art
• Accession number: 1964.257

Collection credit

Severance and Greta Millikin Collection

Further reading listed by the museum

• Cleveland, Richard S. 200 Years of Japanese Porcelain; [Exhibition]. St. Louis: City Art Museum of St. Louis, 1970.
• Catalogue of the Severance and Greta Millikin Collection. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1990.
• Sŏn, Sŭng-hye. The Lure of Painted Poetry: Japanese and Korean Art. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2011.

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.