Fire Screen with Shell-Matching Game (c. 1870–80): Art, History and Details

Fire Screen with Shell-Matching Game (c. 1870–80) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

This screen shielded sitters from the heat of a fireplace. The panel incorporates a Japanese cloth gift cover (fukusa), demonstrating the 19th-century fashion in France for Japanese aesthetics. The French frame is carved to resemble bamboo. In Japan, people traditionally draped fukusa over gifts, selecting designs relevant to the occasion. The lids of the hexagonal lacquer game-piece boxes have a crane in clouds and a tortoise in waves, both symbols of longevity. Wedding gift sets often included shell-matching games like the one depicted here. Only the two halves of a specific clamshell can be perfectly matched; game players used the shells’ interior paintings as clues. Games were sometimes painted with episodes from literature, such as the Tale of Genji.

Object facts

• Title: Fire Screen with Shell-Matching Game
• Date: c. 1870–80
• Culture: France, 19th century
• Type: Furniture and woodwork
• Technique: Gilt wood frame with embroidered silk gift cover mounted as a panel
• Dimensions: Overall: 135.9 x 86.4 x 40.6 cm (53 1/2 x 34 x 16 in.)
• Collection: Furniture
• Department: Decorative Art and Design
• Accession number: 2007.182

Collection credit

Dudley P. Allen Fund

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.