Tea Container with Plum Blossom (early 1800s): Art, History and Details

Tea Container with Plum Blossom (early 1800s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Aoki Mokubei (Japanese, 1767–1833).

The work and its context

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

Aoki Mokubei, born into a family of restaurateurs, was a potter, calligrapher, painter, and scholar, and is considered one of the three masters of later Edo period Kyoto ceramics. He specialized in porcelains fashioned after Chinese prototypes, and created works for steeped tea (sencha) such as these matching tea caddies decorated in an underglaze blue called sometsuke—literally “with applied dye.” He signed them on their bottoms. They also have intricately patterned silk sleeves to both beautify and protect them. On the exterior of the lid of the outer wooden box that contains them, it is written that Mokubei inscribed and painted an image on the box. On the interior of the lid, the signature and seals of a former owner are written. Mokubei has signed the lid of the inner box, and a charming ink and light color composition of West Lake in Hangzhou in China covers its three sides. On the fourth side is a long inscription by Mokubei describing the scene.

Object facts

• Title: Tea Container with Plum Blossom
• Date: early 1800s
• Creator attribution: Aoki Mokubei (Japanese, 1767–1833)
• Culture: Japan, Edo period (1615–1868)
• Type: Ceramic
• Technique: porcelain with underglaze blue
• Dimensions: Overall: 7.5 x 4.6 cm (2 15/16 x 1 13/16 in.)
• Collection: Japanese Art
• Department: Japanese Art
• Accession number: 1989.265.2

Collection credit

Bequest of Mrs. Severance A. Millikin

Further reading listed by the museum

• Catalogue of the Severance and Greta Millikin Collection. Cleveland, OH: Cleveland Museum of Art, 1990.

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.