Pine-shaped Dish (1893–1914): Art, History and Details

Pine-shaped Dish (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 clever design on this stoneware Awata-style dish makes use of the interior and exterior surfaces to present a close-up view of pine needles on the branch painted in underglaze iron oxide. The branch is shown on the outside of one side of the dish, while the needles fan out across the inside. The entire dish, when seen from above, reveals a shape resembling the mushroom cap–like motif appearing in textile designs and in classical Japanese paintings called Yamato-e to represent pine trees.

Object facts

• Title: Pine-shaped Dish
• Date: 1893–1914
• Creator attribution: Seifū Yohei III (Japanese, 1851–1914)
• Culture: Japan, Meiji period (1868–1912)
• Type: Ceramic
• Technique: Stoneware with underglaze iron oxide and crackled glaze
• Dimensions: height: 6 cm (2 3/8 in.); length: 16.5 cm (6 1/2 in.); width: 15.9 cm (6 1/4 in.)
• Collection: Japanese Art
• Department: Japanese Art
• Accession number: 2022.182

A detail from the museum

Awata ware, named for the area of Kyoto where it was historically produced, is considered a subset of Kyoto ware. It is characterized by a very light brown body with a transparent crackled glaze.

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.