Incense Burner (1893–97): Art, History and Details

Incense Burner (1893–97) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Seifū Yohei III (Japanese, 1851–1914).

The work and its context

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

Seifū Yohei III made incense burners in a wide variety of designs and styles. Their silver lids were produced outside the studio by metalwork specialists. This tripod incense burner has a distinctive red-colored glaze and linear molded decorations that run around the base of the collar and down the legs.

Object facts

• Title: Incense Burner
• Date: 1893–97
• Creator attribution: Seifū Yohei III (Japanese, 1851–1914)
• Culture: Japan, Meiji period (1868–1912)
• Type: Ceramic
• Technique: Porcelain with molded design, crimson glaze, and floral openwork silver lid
• Dimensions: height with lid: 10.8 cm (4 1/4 in.); Diameter: 11.4 cm (4 1/2 in.)
• Collection: Japanese Art
• Department: Japanese Art
• Accession number: 2022.178

A detail from the museum

Seifū Yohei III’s incense burner with a variety of flowers on its lid has a glaze described as “crimson glaze” (kōyū); it is also dappled with dark spots of varied opacity and tiny pores throughout, which gives the container a rich, textured effect.

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.