Teabowl with Pinks (1893–1914): Art, History and Details

Teabowl with Pinks (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:

This teabowl, for use in chanoyu, is a good example of Yohei III’s mastery of the techniques involved in producing Kyoto ware. The painting of the pinks, with their blue centers, bright red petals, and green leaves, is carefully controlled with crisp gold borders throughout. There is crackling in the transparent glaze and obvious, thick dripping of the milky glaze over the outside of the mouth of the bowl. The pink spots would have appeared in the clay during firing, and the bottom of the inside of the bowl is entirely pink. A triangular wedge has been cut away from the foot, and a gently impressed band rings the bowl beneath the rim.

Object facts

• Title: Teabowl with Pinks
• Date: 1893–1914
• Creator attribution: Seifū Yohei III (Japanese, 1851–1914)
• Culture: Japan, Meiji period (1868–1912)
• Type: Ceramic
• Technique: Stoneware with crackled glaze and overglaze color enamel and gold
• Dimensions: height: 7.5 cm (2 15/16 in.); Diameter: 11 cm (4 5/16 in.)
• Collection: Japanese Art
• Department: Japanese Art
• Accession number: 2022.184

A detail from the museum

The vessel comes with a bespoke brocade pouch with a silk fastening cord, as is customary for Japanese teabowls.

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.