Boat-Shaped Bowl with Plovers
Medium
Stoneware with crackled glaze and overglaze color enamel and gold
Dimensions
height: h. 5 cm · length: l. 17 cm
Classification
Ceramic
Department
Japanese Art
Museum
Cleveland Museum of Art
Credit
Gift of James and Christine Heusinger
Accession Number
2022.183
Rights
Public Domain
Tags
About this artwork
Overglaze color enamels create a seascape made complete by the bowl’s boat shape. The bowl’s form inserts a human presence into the scene, much in the way rusu mōyō is used in paintings to suggest people just out of view. Rusu mōyō is a pictorial device by which the presence of someone physically absent from an image is conveyed through the depiction of clothing or other items. The inside of the bowl has a scene of plovers flying through the sky over a profusion of seaweed in sand below. In ...