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

Lid for an 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. 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. It has a variety of flowers on its lid. The glaze is 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.

Object facts

• Title: Lid for an Incense Burner
• Date: 1893–97
• Creator attribution: Seifū Yohei III (Japanese, 1851–1914)
• Culture: Japan, Meiji period (1868–1912)
• Type: Ceramic
• Technique: Floral openwork silver lid
• Collection: Japanese Art
• Department: Japanese Art
• Accession number: 2022.178.b

A detail from the museum

The silver lid was produced outside the studio by metalwork specialists.

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.