Lid for a Teapot with Ruyi Motifs (1893–1914): Art, History and Details

Lid for a Teapot with Ruyi Motifs (1893–1914) 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:

The simple, round form of this teapot is embellished with only a pair of nyoi staff-head motifs, one on each side. Two arched iron handles, parallel to each other, are hooked through holes in raised tabs at the front and back of the shoulders of the pot. The round lid is depressed so that an iron ring handle fastened with an iron clamp passing through the lid can lie flat inside the recessed area. The box is not original to the piece and has an inscription dated to 1960. The person who wrote it clearly admired Yohei III and his efforts to produce works that resembled Chinese ceramics. The inscription describes Yohei’s journey to perfecting these copies but misidentified the Chinese kiln whose wares were the basis for this particular work.

Object facts

• Title: Lid for a Teapot with Ruyi Motifs
• Date: 1893–1914
• Creator attribution: Seifū Yohei III (Japanese, 1851–1914)
• Culture: Japan, Meiji period (1868–1912)
• Type: Ceramic
• Technique: Porcelain with molded design and iron handles
• Collection: Japanese Art
• Department: Japanese Art
• Accession number: 2022.176.b

A detail from the museum

The base of the pot has a “Seifu” seal.

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.