Sweets Bowl with Egrets and Willow in Snow (1912–14): Art, History and Details

Sweets Bowl with Egrets and Willow in Snow (1912–14) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Seifū Yohei III (Japanese, 1851–1914).

The work and its context

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

For this sweets bowl, Yohei III designed a dramatic surround of egrets in a willow tree under heavy snow. The entire design is painted in cobalt blue under the transparent glaze. If one turns the bowl clockwise, two egrets come into view, one after the other. As they ascend, both struggle against the wind amid snow-laden weeping willow branches. They are followed by a stretch of willow branches that evoke the bitter cold. The sky is painted with blue washes all around the designs. The imagery culminates in a group of three egrets huddled together in the crotch of the tree. Of course, it is also possible to read the scene in the other direction, in which case the sheltering egrets look toward one of the flying egrets, who looks back at them, and it is the egret with wings outspread, looking directly down, who concludes the scene. Two thin bands of blue set off the design just under the bowl’s rim, and a band of brown iron oxide runs along the rim. Another two bands of blue run around the middle of the foot. The inside of the bowl’s box lid has an attestation by Yohei IV that it is the work of Yohei III.

Object facts

• Title: Sweets Bowl with Egrets and Willow in Snow
• Date: 1912–14
• Creator attribution: Seifū Yohei III (Japanese, 1851–1914)
• Culture: Japan, Meiji period (1868–1912)
• Type: Ceramic
• Technique: Porcelain with underglaze blue and iron oxide
• Dimensions: height: 10 cm (3 15/16 in.); Diameter: 19.5 cm (7 11/16 in.)
• Collection: Japanese Art
• Department: Japanese Art
• Accession number: 2022.154

A detail from the museum

This sweets bowl requires someone to rotate it to experience the birds observing one another.

Collection credit

Gift of James and Christine Heusinger

Further reading listed by the museum

• Maezaki, Shinya and Sinéad Vilbar. Colors of Kyoto: The Seifū Yohei Ceramic Studio. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 2023.

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.