Tea Set with Chinese Landscapes (1893–1914): Art, History and Details

Tea Set with Chinese Landscapes (1893–1914) 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:

The theme of this sencha tea set is the Chinese scholar-recluse in an idyllic landscape. The teapot depicts two friends playing a board game on a promontory beyond a two-storied residence, while another figure comes across the entry bridge bearing bags of provisions, hung from the ends of a pole balanced across his shoulders. The kidney-shaped water cooler has a scene of a man gazing at a full moon in a dramatic mountain-scape stretching before a large compound in the woods. Another man, hunched over and carrying a heavy parcel tied to a pole over his shoulder, struggles to make his way up a hill to the site. The cooler also has a pair of applied nyoi staff-head forms for resting the tips of one’s thumb and index finger, like those on the water cooler with pine trees (see [19]). Each of the five teacups has a landscape with an architectural structure and some human activity. One cup shows a man with a staff walking away from a residence toward a boat, loaded with what might be a musical instrument wrapped for travel. A second cup shows a man rowing a little skiff, which disturbs the otherwise still water. Behind him in the distance is an open-air pavilion. He is making his way toward a pair of figures playing a board game, much like the scene on the teapot. Down the hill from them is a residence; beyond this, a flock of geese approaches through the sky. A third cup shows a man in a traveling robe leaning upon his staff as he crosses a bridge to reach a two-story building with a pitched roof, possibly a temple, set between trees. Past this structure, another man sits fishing in a boat. A fourth cup shows a humbly dressed man with a broad-brimmed hat lugging a package tied to the end of a rod slung over his shoulder. In front of him is a two-story building flanked by deciduous trees and a man resting against the side of a sturdy stone bridge as he looks at a residence, or perhaps a set of roofed gates, further up the path. The last cup has a man walking toward a group of three pavilions announced with a banner hanging from a tall post; beyond this are two large deciduous trees sheltering a stand of small conifers. Across the water from this site is another man sitting on the bank fishing with a large woven basket for his catch beside him.

Object facts

• Title: Tea Set with Chinese Landscapes
• Date: 1893–1914
• Creator attribution: Seifū Yohei III (Japanese, 1851–1914)
• Culture: Japan, Meiji period (1868–1912)
• Type: Ceramic
• Technique: Tea set with tea pot, hot water cooler, and five cups; porcelain with underglaze blue
• Dimensions: teapot height with lid: 9.2 cm (3 5/8 in.); width with handle: 11.2 cm (4 7/16 in.); hot water cooler: 5.4 x 11.9 x 7.4 cm (2 1/8 x 4 11/16 x 2 15/16 in.); (each) drinking cup: 5 x 8.5 cm (1 15/16 x 3 3/8 in.)
• Collection: Japanese Art
• Department: Japanese Art
• Accession number: 2022.171

A detail from the museum

Images of famous sencha events that shows that these kinds of porcelains fit with objects, such as a stove and kettle, to form a complete set of utensils for tea preparation, and with ensembles of decorative objects meant to inspire creativity.

Collection credit

Gift of James and Christine Heusinger

Further reading listed by the museum

• Vilbar, Sinead. "Colors of Kyoto: Modern ceramics of Japan.” Cleveland Art: Cleveland Museum of Art Members Magazine 63, no. 2 (2023): 14–17.
• Maezaki, Shinya and Sinéad Vilbar. Colors of Kyoto: The Seifū Yohei Ceramic Studio. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 2023.
• Goodall, Hollis. "Seifū Yohei III: Master of Finesse." Impressions: The Journal of the Japanese Art Society of America 45, part 2 (2024): 178-193.

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.