Jar (1200s–1300s): Art, History and Details

Jar (1200s–1300s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

Like the Teabowl with Tortoiseshell Glaze (CMA 2020.177), this jar was made in the Jizhou kilns of southeast China. Producing a variety of innovative dark glaze types, the potter here created a dynamic abstract pattern of waves in the form of light brown strokes brushed over a dark brown glaze.

Object facts

• Title: Jar
• Date: 1200s–1300s
• Culture: China, Jiangxi province, Jizhou kilns, Southern Song Dynasty (1127–1279) - Yuan Dynasty (1271–1368)
• Type: Ceramic
• Technique: Glazed stoneware with resist and slip-painted decoration, Jizhou ware
• Dimensions: Diameter: 13.4 cm (5 1/4 in.); Overall: 11.3 cm (4 7/16 in.)
• Collection: China - Song Dynasty
• Department: Chinese Art
• Accession number: 1986.14

A detail from the museum

To create leaf imprints in Jizhou ware, artisans dipped real leaves in glaze and placed them on vessels, where the leaves would then burn away while firing in the kiln.

Collection credit

John L. Severance Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Turner, Evan H. “The Year in Review for 1986.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 74, no. 2 (February 1987): 38–79.
• Mowry, Robert D., Eugene Farrell, and Nicole Coolidge Rousmaniere. Hare's Fur, Tortoiseshell, and Partridge Feathers: Chinese Brown- and Black-Glazed Ceramics, 400-1400. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Art Museums, 1996.
• Von Spee, Clarissa. "Chinese Ceramics and Works on Paper." In The Keithley Collection at the Cleveland Museum of Art, edited by Heather Lemonedes Brown, 194–229. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 2022.

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.