Dish with Reeds and Mist (c. 1700): Art, History and Details

Dish with Reeds and Mist (c. 1700) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

The interior of this dish features clusters of reeds emerging from mist. The gradation of blue wash in the background suggests that the scene is set by still waters, perhaps the banks of a river or edge of a marsh. The celadon, or pale green glaze, evocative of mist or fog, contrasts visually with the reeds and water.

Object facts

• Title: Dish with Reeds and Mist
• Date: c. 1700
• Culture: Japan, Edo period (1615–1868)
• Type: Ceramic
• Technique: Porcelain with underglaze blue and overglaze color enamel (Hizen ware, Nabeshima type)
• Dimensions: Diameter: 20.1 cm (7 15/16 in.); Overall: 5.6 cm (2 3/16 in.)
• Collection: Japanese Art
• Department: Japanese Art
• Accession number: 1964.271

A detail from the museum

Nabeshima dishes were produced in standard sizes of three, five, and seven sun (a traditional measurement of around 3 cm) in diameter.

Collection credit

Severance and Greta Millikin Collection

Further reading listed by the museum

• Catalogue of the Severance and Greta Millikin Collection. Cleveland, Ohio: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1990.
• Grossman, Nancy, James T. Ulak, Marjorie Williams, and Laurence Channing. Art of Japan: Masterpieces from the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland, Ohio: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2005.

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.