Wine Cup with Children at Play (1465–87): Art, History and Details

Wine Cup with Children at Play (1465–87) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

This delicate wine cup, only two inches high, exhibits free, spontaneous drawing as well as perfect compositional balance over its small surface area. The motifs were outlined with cobalt blue; the piece was then glazed and fired in the normal way for making the blue-and-white ware. After firing, the outline painting was completed with colored enamels over the glaze. The piece was fired the second time. The pictorial decoration is refined and complicated; the porcelain body is of exceptionally high quality and is thin, translucent, and light in weight.

Object facts

• Title: Wine Cup with Children at Play
• Date: 1465–87
• Culture: China, Jiangxi province, Jingdezhen, Ming dynasty (1368-1644), Chenghua mark and period (1465-1487)
• Type: Ceramic
• Technique: porcelain with underglaze blue and overglaze enamel decoration, docai ("joined colors") ware
• Dimensions: Overall: 4.8 cm (1 7/8 in.)
• Collection: China - Ming Dynasty
• Department: Chinese Art
• Accession number: 1957.61

A detail from the museum

Chenghua ware demonstrates one of the high points of technological accomplishment in Chinese porcelain production.

Collection credit

John L. Severance Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• The Cleveland Museum of Art. The Cleveland Museum of Art Handbook. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1958.
• Lee, Sherman E. A History of Far Eastern Art. New York: H.N. Abrams, 1964.
• The Cleveland Museum of Art. Handbook of the Cleveland Museum of Art/1966. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1966.

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.