Wine Flask with Plum and Bamboo Design (1600s): Art, History and Details

Wine Flask with Plum and Bamboo Design (1600s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

This Korean wine flask embodies Lin Bu’s poetic line "Plums’ subtle scent pervades the moonlit dusk": its circular shape alludes to the full moon, and the gray color unintentionally spread on the flask’s lower part suggests the permeating scent of plum. The other side of the flask features a bamboo design. The plum and bamboo derive from the motif of the Four Gentlemen, which compares four plants to Confucian scholarjunzi, or "gentlemen."

Object facts

• Title: Wine Flask with Plum and Bamboo Design
• Date: 1600s
• Culture: Korea, Joseon dynasty (1392–1910)
• Type: Ceramic
• Technique: glazed porcelain with underglazed iron design
• Dimensions: Overall: 21.9 x 19 x 8.4 cm (8 5/8 x 7 1/2 x 3 5/16 in.)
• Collection: Korean Art
• Department: Korean Art
• Accession number: 1999.44

A detail from the museum

The shape of this bottle can be traced all the way back to an ancient Persian pilgrim’s flask.

Collection credit

John L. Severance Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Cleveland Museum of Art, “Major Contemporary German Painting Acquired by CMA,” June 9, 1999, Cleveland Museum of Art Archives.
• Sŏn, Sŭng-hye. The Lure of Painted Poetry: Japanese and Korean Art. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 2011.
• Kang, Kyeong-sook. History of Korean Ceramics [韓國陶磁史]. Seoul: Yekyong, 2012.

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.