Storage Jar (late 1300s–1400s): Art, History and Details

Storage Jar (late 1300s–1400s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

The red color of this jar comes from iron in the clay. Natural ash glaze settled on the vessel during firing. The rim would have been complete with a slightly flared lip. Around the collar is an incised pattern resembling cypress fences, a common scene in the Japanese landscape. Intended for grain storage, rustic vessels like this one were also prized by tea enthusiasts, who appreciated the uncalculated beauty of the glaze and the asymmetry of these humble vessels.

Object facts

• Title: Storage Jar
• Date: late 1300s–1400s
• Culture: Japan, Muromachi period (1392–1573)
• Type: Ceramic
• Technique: Stoneware with natural ash glaze (Shigaraki ware)
• Dimensions: height: 45.7 cm (18 in.); Diameter: 42 cm (16 9/16 in.)
• Collection: Japanese Art
• Department: Japanese Art
• Accession number: 1973.18

A detail from the museum

This jar was probably made using a coiling method, where coils of clay are stacked atop each other and smoothed to form its structure.

Collection credit

John L. Severance Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Lee, Sherman E. “Some Japanese Tea Taste Ceramics.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 60, no. 9 (November 1973): 267–278.
• Henning, Edward B. “Planes, Structure, Color, and Content.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art 61, no. 7 (September 1974): 223–239.
• Hauge, Victor, and Takako Hauge. Folk Traditions in Japanese Art. Washington: International Exhibitions Foundation, 1978.

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.