Sake Flask (1500s): Art, History and Details

Sake Flask (1500s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

This flask contained rice wine, or sake. Its wood body was shaped by a lathe before black lacquer was applied to the surface. A red lacquer design of grapevines, an auspicious motif, covers the surface. With their numerous, long-lasting fruits, grapevines traditionally symbolized fertility and longevity in East Asia.

Object facts

• Title: Sake Flask
• Date: 1500s
• Culture: Japan, Muromachi period (1392–1573)
• Type: Lacquer
• Technique: Black laquered wood with red lacquer
• Dimensions: Diameter: 24 cm (9 7/16 in.); Overall: 30.5 cm (12 in.)
• Collection: Japanese Art
• Department: Japanese Art
• Accession number: 1991.47.1

A detail from the museum

The evocative imagery of brushed leaves and bunches of grapes suggest that the artist referred to a particular painting when decorating this vase.

Collection credit

Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Turner, Evan H., et al. “Notable Acquisitions.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art, vol. 78, no. 3, 1991, pp. 63–147.
• Cunningham, Michael R. The Triumph of Japanese Style: 16th-Century Art in Japan. [Cleveland, Ohio]: Published by the Cleveland Museum of Art in cooperation with the Indiana University Press, 1991.
• Sŏn, Sŭng-hye. The Lure of Painted Poetry: Japanese and Korean Art. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2011.

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.