Hexagonal Flower Pot (1300s–1400s): Art, History and Details

Hexagonal Flower Pot (1300s–1400s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

This deep hexagonal flowerpot, one of a pair in the collection, is numbered "8" and bears additional inscriptions to indicate specifically the location of its usage within the palace: "for use in the Study of Illumination (Mingchuang yong)" within the "Hall of Cultivating the Mind (Yangxin Dian)" of the Forbidden City. The inscriptions seem to suggest the Qing imperial provenance of this flower pot.

Object facts

• Title: Hexagonal Flower Pot
• Date: 1300s–1400s
• Culture: China, Henan province, Yuxian, Juntai, Ming dynasty (1368-1644)
• Type: Ceramic
• Technique: porcelaneous stoneware, numbered Jun ware
• Dimensions: Overall: 12.5 x 15 cm (4 15/16 x 5 7/8 in.)
• Collection: China - Yuan Dynasty
• Department: Chinese Art
• Accession number: 1942.661.1

Collection credit

Bequest of John L. Severance

Further reading listed by the museum

• Catalogue of the John L. Severance Collection: Bequest of John L. Severance, 1936. [Cleveland, Ohio]: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1942.
• Hollis, Howard. “Department of Oriental Art: Chinese Ceramics and Jades.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 29, no. 9 (November 1942): 150–157.
• Kerr, Rose. Dazzling Official Jun Wares: From Museums and Collections Around the World. [Woodbridge, Suffolk, UK] : ACC Art Books, 2021.

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.