Pair of Leather Bag-Shaped Flasks with Covers (916–1125): Art, History and Details

Pair of Leather Bag-Shaped Flasks with Covers (916–1125) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

Flasks like these derive their shapes from leather bags; even the edges are finely rouletted to resemble the seams of sewn leather. These were used by the nomadic Khitan people who established the Liao kingdom in Inner Mongolia, Manchuria, and North China. Such wares represented the Liao adoption of the Tang Chinese ceramic tradition, and yet they expressed ethnic identity and new innovations resulted from the cultural borrowing.

Object facts

• Title: Pair of Leather Bag-Shaped Flasks with Covers
• Date: 916–1125
• Culture: Northeast China, Liao dynasty (916-1125)
• Type: Ceramic
• Technique: earthenware with green glaze
• Dimensions: Part 1: 24.5 x 16.5 x 16 cm (9 5/8 x 6 1/2 x 6 5/16 in.); Part 2: 23.5 x 17.5 x 13.8 cm (9 1/4 x 6 7/8 x 5 7/16 in.)
• Collection: Chinese Art
• Department: Chinese Art
• Accession number: 2012.448

A detail from the museum

These earthenware vessels are intentionally made to look like leather storage bags with details that resemble stitching around the spout and handle.

Collection credit

Gift of Donna and James Reid

Further reading listed by the museum

• Uragami, Mitsuru 浦上満. Ryō no tōji [遼の陶磁 = Liao Ceramics]. Tōkyō: Uragami Sōkyūdō, 2005.
• “Art of Asia Acquired by North American Museums, 2011-2012.” Archives of Asian Art, vol. 63, no. 2, 2013, pp. 215–276.

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.