Sake Bottle with Three Figures (late 1700s): Art, History and Details

Sake Bottle with Three Figures (late 1700s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

The bottle features three elegantly drawn figures: a beautiful woman, a young man, and a priest. The artist used a fine-haired brush to draw these figures in colored enamel onto the porcelain bottle, which had already been given a clear glaze. A final firing fused the enamel to the form. The name derives from the port of Imari from where Japanese porcelains were shipped to other cities in Japan, China, and Europe.

Object facts

• Title: Sake Bottle with Three Figures
• Date: late 1700s
• Culture: Japan, Edo period (1615–1868)
• Type: Ceramic
• Technique: porcelain with overglaze enamel and gold decoration (Hizen ware, Arita type)
• Dimensions: Diameter: 14.3 cm (5 5/8 in.); with cover: 27.2 cm (10 11/16 in.); without cover: 24.2 cm (9 1/2 in.)
• Collection: Japanese Art
• Department: Japanese Art
• Accession number: 1964.272.a

Collection credit

Severance and Greta Millikin Collection

Further reading listed by the museum

• Cleveland Museum of Art, and Jenifer Neils. The World of Ceramics: Masterpieces from the Cleveland Museum of Art. Cleveland: Museum in cooperation with Indiana University Press, 1982.

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.