Teacup from Teacups with Chinese Landscapes (1914–46): Art, History and Details

Teacup from Teacups with Chinese Landscapes (1914–46) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Seifū Yohei IV (Japanese, 1872–1951).

The work and its context

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

Originally from a set of 12, each of these 11 sencha teacups has a different landscape wrapped around the body, giving individual cups their own engaging narrative. These paintings are comfortingly familiar in their formulaic qualities, known to any casual fan of ink painting; they are also enjoyable in the way the narratives are revealed as one manipulates the cups. They would be perfect as conversation pieces for a tea gathering. Four of the cups focus on travelers approaching residences. Two have a person crossing a bridge as their central motif: one man has a backpack, and the other, a cloth-wrapped bundle hanging from a pole slung over his shoulder. Another cup depicts a pair of friends gathered together on rock platforms. A single cup shows a man carrying a furled banner toward a pavilion. The remaining three cups feature people riding in boats: two have literati passengers, and the third is occupied by a fisherman. Seifu Yohei IV’s training as a painter with Tanomura Shosai (1847–1909), an adoptive son of Tanomura Chokunyu, his father’s painting teacher, is evident in the details of the tiny worlds created on the cups.

Object facts

• Title: Teacup from Teacups with Chinese Landscapes
• Date: 1914–46
• Creator attribution: Seifū Yohei IV (Japanese, 1872–1951)
• Culture: Japan, Meiji period (1868–1912)
• Type: Ceramic
• Technique: One from a set of eleven teacups; porcelain with underglaze blue
• Dimensions: Overall: 4 x 6.6 cm (1 9/16 x 2 5/8 in.)
• Collection: Japanese Art
• Department: Japanese Art
• Accession number: 2022.202.4

A detail from the museum

Seifū Yohei IV produced many works for use in Chinese-style tea gatherings called 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.