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
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 ...