Storage Jar: Sueki ware (700s): Art, History and Details

Storage Jar: Sueki ware (700s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

This robust vessel was formed from clay coils that were beaten inside and out with wooden paddles to compress the body walls and merge the coils. In addition, the exterior surface was paddled and scored with carved wooden tools to decorate the body walls. Finally, the vessel was turned on a potter's wheel to attach the neck with a smoothly finished surface. A high firing (approximately 1000°), which culminated with a reduced oxygen phase, produced the dark gray surface tone. Sueki ware ceramics originated in the mid-400s, when Korean potters and kiln builders established clusters of kilns in the modern Osaka area. Other production centers were established in the outlying provinces by the late 500s, providing for the diffusion of this ceramic ware throughout the country into the 1000s. Sueki wares demonstrate ancient Japan's close cultural ties with the Korean peninsula. Similar vessels have been recovered from sites in the southern regions of the Korean peninsula.

Object facts

• Title: Storage Jar: Sueki ware
• Date: 700s
• Culture: Japan, Nara period (710–94)
• Type: Ceramic
• Technique: stoneware with incised and impressed decoration and natural ash glaze
• Dimensions: Diameter of mouth: 23.8 cm (9 3/8 in.); Overall: 49.2 x 50 cm (19 3/8 x 19 11/16 in.)
• Collection: Japanese Art
• Department: Japanese Art
• Accession number: 1998.170

Collection credit

John L. Severance Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Cleveland Museum of Art, “New Cleveland Indian Arrives at the CMA,” November 27, 1998, Cleveland Museum of Art Archives.

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.