Haniwa in the Form of a Shield (c. 500): Art, History and Details

Haniwa in the Form of a Shield (c. 500) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

Haniwa (clay cylinders) topped with the form of a shield, or with a shield and quiver of arrows, appear on some tomb mounds called kofun (old mounds). There are also warriors holding a shield, their heads peeping out over the tops, or diagonally across their bodies. There are even some haniwa with a warrior’s helmet sitting at the top of the cylinder above the shield. This unusual object has a shield and quiver on the front, and the face of a warrior wearing a helmet on the reverse.

Object facts

• Title: Haniwa in the Form of a Shield
• Date: c. 500
• Culture: Japan, Kofun period (300–710 CE)
• Type: Sculpture
• Technique: Earthenware with applied, cut, and incised designs and red slip
• Dimensions: Overall: 120 x 48.7 x 18 cm (47 1/4 x 19 3/16 x 7 1/16 in.)
• Collection: Japanese Art
• Department: Japanese Art
• Accession number: 1999.170

Collection credit

The Severance and Greta Millikin Purchase Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Cleveland Museum of Art, “Mrs. Paul Wurzburger Donates Major Calder Mobile to Cleveland Museum of Art, Korean Painting, Japanese Ceramic, Italian Drawing and other Works Acquired” September 8, 1999, Cleveland Museum of Art Archives.
• Cunningham, Michael. "A Japanese Totem." Cleveland Art: Cleveland Museum of Art Members Magazine 40, no. 7 (September 2000): 6–7.
• Longhi, Leighton R. Leighton R. Longhi: Forty-Five Years in Asian Art. [New York, N.Y.]: Leighton R. Longhi, 2019.

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.