Plate with Peony Decoration (late 1300s–early 1400s): Art, History and Details

Plate with Peony Decoration (late 1300s–early 1400s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

This lacquer dish of strikingly deep red color is decorated with a dynamically carved design of three peony blossoms. Because of the complexity in lacquer production, items are often small and were seldom made for daily use. Lacquer was traditionally made using the sap of the lacquer tree found in southern China. Many successive layers of lacquer would be applied until the surface could be carved into complex geometric or figural forms. Red became the preferred color for lacquerware carvings, in part because the color has long been associated with good fortune in China.

Object facts

• Title: Plate with Peony Decoration
• Date: late 1300s–early 1400s
• Culture: China, Yuan dynasty (1271-1368)
• Type: Lacquer
• Technique: carved cinnabar lacquer on wood
• Dimensions: Diameter: 16.5 cm (6 1/2 in.)
• Collection: China - Yuan Dynasty
• Department: Chinese Art
• Accession number: 1977.6

Collection credit

John L. Severance Collection

Further reading listed by the museum

• The Chinese Exhibition; A Commemorative Catalogue of the International Exhibition of Chinese Art, Royal Academy of Arts, November 1935-March 1936. London: Faber and Faber, 1936.
• The Arts of the Ming Dynasty; An Exhibition Organised by the Arts Council of Great Britain and the Oriental Ceramic Society, November 15th to December 14th, 1957 at the Arts Council Gallery. London: Arts Council of Great Britain, 1958
• Lee, Sherman E., and Wai-kam Ho. Chinese Art Under the Mongols: The Yüan Dynasty, 1279-1368. [Cleveland, OH]: The Cleveland Museum of Art; [distributed by the Press of Case Western Reserve University], 1968.

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.