The Saltmaker's Story (early 1600s): Art, History and Details

The Saltmaker's Story (early 1600s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

Once read and copied by girls at New Year’s celebrations and included in dowries, The Saltmaker’s Story is a rags-to-riches tale in which daughters are gifts from the gods. Despite his simple outlook, the main character progresses from humble roots as an associate at Kashima Shrine to the elite status of grandfather of the emperor through the intervention of the Kashima deity. The Saltmaker’s Story is traditionally presented in a set of three scrolls, but the text of this set has been removed by a previous owner, who remounted the illustrations as a pair. The paintings of this one take us from right to left through the second half of the tale.

Object facts

• Title: The Saltmaker's Story
• Date: early 1600s
• Culture: Japan, Edo period (1615–1868)
• Type: Painting
• Technique: One of a pair of handscrolls; ink, color, and gold on paper
• Dimensions: Overall: 17.7 x 917.5 cm (6 15/16 x 361 1/4 in.)
• Collection: ASIAN - Handscroll
• Department: Japanese Art
• Accession number: 1972.12.2

A detail from the museum

This handscroll originally had texts before its paintings, but the texts were removed.

Collection credit

John L. Severance Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Lee, Sherman E. “The Year in Review for 1972.” The Bulletin of the Cleveland Museum of Art, vol. 60, no. 3, 1973, pp. 63–115.
• Cleveland Museum of Art. Motherhood across Time. Cleveland: Cleveland Museum of Art, 2021.

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.