Wine Cup (pair) (1900s): Art, History and Details

Wine Cup (pair) (1900s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

In ancestor veneration rituals, deceased parents or ancestors are sanctified as spirits who are believed to oversee their descendants. Three times a year, once at the lunar new year, once at the person’s death date, and once at the time of the mid-autumn festival, food would be placed on the table for the ancestors, including fruits, rice, meat, and rice wine. During these ceremonies the worshipers’ attitude was as reverential toward the objects meant to embody the ancestors’ spirits as that toward a living parent. This pair of brass cups may have been used for ancestral rituals to contain rice wine.

Object facts

• Title: Wine Cup (pair)
• Date: 1900s
• Culture: North Korea, Yochon
• Type: Metalwork
• Technique: brass
• Dimensions: Diameter of mouth: 2.9 x 6.2 cm (1 1/8 x 2 7/16 in.)
• Collection: Korean Art
• Department: Korean Art
• Accession number: 2000.1001

A detail from the museum

This pair of bronze cups may have been used in family rituals such as ancestral worship ceremonies.

Collection credit

Gift of Henry B. Andrews

Further reading listed by the museum

• An, Gui-sook, Korean Bronze Artisans [유기장]. Seoul: Hwasan munhwa, 2002.

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.