Jar with Scenes of Frolicking Xingxing (1302): Art, History and Details

Jar with Scenes of Frolicking Xingxing (1302) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

This jar features a design of a monkey-like animal ladling sake into his mouth from a vessel bobbing in waves, along with others trying on sandals and crossing a river. In the 1300s, Chinese literature was a powerful source of inspiration for artistic practice in Japan, and this scene was inspired by the exploits of the mythical xingxing, a beast of ancient Chinese lore for whom people left straw sandals and wine. The xingxing would then recite the names of the ancestors of those who had left them the gifts.

Object facts

• Title: Jar with Scenes of Frolicking Xingxing
• Date: 1302
• Culture: Japan, Kamakura period (1185–1333)
• Type: Lacquer
• Technique: Zelkova wood, covered with hemp cloth and colored lacquer, and bronze-plated wood fittings
• Dimensions: Diameter: 47.2 cm (18 9/16 in.); Overall: 49.4 cm (19 7/16 in.)
• Collection: Japanese Art
• Department: Japanese Art
• Accession number: 1984.8

A detail from the museum

To make this vessel, a wooden form was covered with successive layers of lacquer, the clear sap of the highly toxic Rhus verniciflua tree.

Collection credit

Leonard C. Hanna Jr. Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Turner, Evan H. “The Year in Review for 1984.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 72, no. 2 (April 1985): 163–207.
• Yamane, Yūzō 山根有三, Takashi Hamada 山根有三, et al. Zaigai bijutsu [在外美術 = Selections of Japanese Art from Western Collections]. Tōkyō: Shōgakukan, 1994.
• Cunningham, Michael R., Stanislaw J. Czuma, Anne E. Wardwell, and J. Keith Wilson. Masterworks of Asian Art. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1998.

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.