Jar with Four Auspicious Characters in Relief (1800s): Art, History and Details

Jar with Four Auspicious Characters in Relief (1800s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

This white porcelain vase is decorated with four Chinese characters symbolizing auspicious (hopeful) wishes—longevity, good fortune, health, and peace—each within a floral medallion. Such jars were often presented as birthday or wedding gifts, conveying the giver’s blessings for a long and harmonious life. This object was purchased in 1981 from Kochukyo (壺中居), an antique gallery founded in 1924 in Tokyo, Japan. Many important Korean works remain in Japanese private collections, after being taken there during the Japanese colonial period (1910–45). Consequently, Japanese antique galleries continue to handle Korean antiquities, serving as significant channels for their circulation today.

Object facts

• Title: Jar with Four Auspicious Characters in Relief
• Date: 1800s
• Culture: Korea, Joseon dynasty (1392–1910)
• Type: Ceramic
• Technique: glazed porcelain
• Dimensions: Outer diameter: 22.1 cm (8 11/16 in.); height: 19.4 cm (7 5/8 in.)
• Collection: Korean Art
• Department: Korean Art
• Accession number: 1981.3

A detail from the museum

This type of jar with auspicious characters was often used as a birthday or wedding gift.

Collection credit

Severance and Greta Millikin Purchase Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Neils, Jenifer. The World of Ceramics: Masterpieces from the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland, OH: The Museum in cooperation with Indiana University Press, 1982.
• Lee, Sherman E. “The Year in Review for 1981.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 69, no. 2 (February 1982): 39–82.
• Bang, Byung-sun. "The Technology of Porcelain Manufacturing in the late Chosŏn Dynasty [朝鮮 後期 白磁의 製作技術 硏究]." Misul sahak yeongu (1997): 67–104.

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.