Poem Card Box with Lid (1868–1912): Art, History and Details

Poem Card Box with Lid (1868–1912) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Kamisaka Sekka (Japanese, 1866–1942).

The work and its context

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

Long, decorated cards for the calligraphic presentation of poems are called tanzaku in Japanese. This box is a collaboration between the designer Kamisaka Sekka and the lacquer artist Iwamura Sadazō. Together, they crafted this box with a golden bamboo lid, and filled it with cards decorated with gold leaf designs.

Object facts

• Title: Poem Card Box with Lid
• Date: 1868–1912
• Creator attribution: Kamisaka Sekka (Japanese, 1866–1942)
• Culture: Japan, Meiji period (1868–1912)
• Type: Lacquer
• Technique: wood with lacquer
• Dimensions: Overall: 37.5 x 7.1 cm (14 3/4 x 2 13/16 in.)
• Collection: Japanese Art
• Department: Japanese Art
• Accession number: 1991.120

A detail from the museum

Poems written on long poetry cards, or tanzaku, are often collected into albums called tekagami in Japanese.

Collection credit

Seventy-fifth anniversary gift of Leighton R. Longhi

Further reading listed by the museum

• Turner, Evan H. “The Year in Review for 1992.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art, vol. 80, no. 2, 1993, pp. 38–79.

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.