Guan-Shaped Vessel with Floral Scroll (1914–46): Art, History and Details

Guan-Shaped Vessel with Floral Scroll (1914–46) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Seifū Yohei IV (Japanese, 1872–1951).

The work and its context

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

Many of the vases created by Yohei III and IV were made with reference to and in emulation of Chinese ceramics in both form and glazing. The Seifu studio was inspired by later Chinese copies of two other archaic vessel types, the hu (Japanese ko) and guan (Japanese kan). In simple terms, in their original contexts, the hu and guan were storage jars that also appeared in ritual contexts. This hefty guan-shaped vase by Yohei IV has a floral scrolling pattern known in Japanese as karakusa, or “Chinese grasses.” The flowers are generally identified as lotus or peony. This flower vase might alternately be categorized as having the form of what is called a shukaiko in Japan, or a large vessel for holding wine. Shukaiko were created as early as the latter part of the Kamakura period after Yuan dynasty examples.

Object facts

• Title: Guan-Shaped Vessel with Floral Scroll
• Date: 1914–46
• Creator attribution: Seifū Yohei IV (Japanese, 1872–1951)
• Culture: Japan, Taishō period (1912–26) or Shōwa period (1926–89)
• Type: Ceramic
• Technique: Porcelain with molded and carved design and cream glaze
• Dimensions: height: 25.7 cm (10 1/8 in.); Diameter: 24.2 cm (9 1/2 in.)
• Collection: Japanese Art
• Department: Japanese Art
• Accession number: 2022.227

A detail from the museum

According to the box lid, the vase is a kanpakuji, "bright-jewel white porcelain," work.

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.