Teacup from Teacups with a Hundred Sages (1893–1914): Art, History and Details

Teacup from Teacups with a Hundred Sages (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:

Each of these five teacups has a painting of identical design in underglaze blue, but as the tiny figures are drawn entirely by hand, each cup has its own personality. The theme of the sencha cups is an assembly of sages or immortals, literally “a hundred venerable [people]” (hyakurō). The myriad figures crowd the scene in groups. The god of longevity, with his tall forehead, sits with his cranes, having flown in from Mt. Penglai on the Isle of the Immortals. Seven long-bearded sages sit around a stone table, chatting and drinking; one is seated on an enormous gourd. Of course, there is a stack of books on the table, and elsewhere, scrolls are being written upon or read—in one case held very close by a sage who is wearing glasses. The design was enormously popular in ceramics made for those engaged in literati culture.

Object facts

• Title: Teacup from Teacups with a Hundred Sages
• Date: 1893–1914
• Creator attribution: Seifū Yohei III (Japanese, 1851–1914)
• Culture: Japan, Meiji period (1868–1912)
• Type: Ceramic
• Technique: One from a set of five teacups; porcelain with underglaze blue
• Dimensions: Overall: 6.5 x 9 cm (2 9/16 x 3 9/16 in.)
• Collection: Japanese Art
• Department: Japanese Art
• Accession number: 2022.169.2

A detail from the museum

Seifū Yohei III (1851–1914) produced many works for tea gatherings where people drank Chinese-style leaf-tea (sencha).

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.