Pair of Hexagonal Flower Pots (1300s–1400s): Art, History and Details

Pair of Hexagonal Flower Pots (1300s–1400s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

This deep hexagonal flowerpot, one of a pair in the collection, is numbered "8" and bears additional inscriptions to indicate specifically the location of its usage within the palace: "for use in the Study of Illumination (Mingchuang yong)" within the "Hall of Cultivating the Mind (Yangxin Dian)" of the Forbidden City. The inscriptions seem to suggest the Qing imperial provenance of this pair.

Object facts

• Title: Pair of Hexagonal Flower Pots
• Date: 1300s–1400s
• Culture: China, Henan province, Yuxian, Juntai, Ming dynasty (1368-1644)
• Type: Ceramic
• Technique: porcelaneous stoneware, numbered Jun ware
• Dimensions: Overall: 12.5 x 15 cm (4 15/16 x 5 7/8 in.); Part 2: 13.4 x 14 cm (5 1/4 x 5 1/2 in.)
• Collection: China - Yuan Dynasty
• Department: Chinese Art
• Accession number: 1942.661

Collection credit

Bequest of John L. Severance

Further reading listed by the museum

• John Long Severance Art Collection Photographs: Old Chinese Porcelains, Cleveland Museum of Art Archives.
• Catalogue of the John L. Severance Collection: Bequest of John L. Severance, 1936. [Cleveland, Ohio]: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1942.
• Hollis, Howard. “Department of Oriental Art: Chinese Ceramics and Jades.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 29, no. 9 (November 1942): 150–157.

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.