Cleveland Museum of Art

Teacup from Tea Set with Chinese Landscape

Seifū Yohei III

Date

c. 1893–1914

Medium

Porcelain with underglaze blue

Culture

Japan, Meiji period (1868–1912)

Department

Japanese Art

Institution

Cleveland Museum of Art

The theme of this sencha tea set is the Chinese scholar-recluse in an idyllic landscape. Each of the five teacups has a landscape with an architectural structure and some human activity. This tea set has a side-handled pot called a kyūsu , used for steeping, straining, and serving tea. Unlike some others, this set also has a yuzamashi , a container used to cool boiled water to just the right temperature for the best flavor when steeping. Seifū Yohei III’s painting teacher, Tanomura Chokunyū (1814–1907), made a visual record of famous sencha events that shows how these kinds of porcelains fit with objects such as a stove and kettle to form a complete set of utensils for tea preparation, and with ensembles of decorative objects meant to inspire creativity A fourth cup shows a humbly dressed man with a broad-brimmed hat lugging a package tied to the end of a rod slung over his shoulder. In front of him is a two-story building flanked by deciduous trees and a man resting against the side of a sturdy stone bridge as he looks at a residence, or perhaps a set of roofed gates, further up the path.

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