Cleveland Museum of Art

Water Cooler from Tea Set with Chinese Landscape

Date

1893–1914

Medium

Porcelain with underglaze blue

Culture

Japan, Meiji period (1868–1912)

Department

Japanese Art

Institution

Cleveland Museum of Art

The kidney-shaped water cooler, yuzamashi , has a scene of a man gazing at a full moon in a dramatic mountain-scape stretching before a large compound in the woods. Another man, hunched over and carrying a heavy parcel tied to a pole over his shoulder, struggles to make his way up a hill to the site. The cooler also has a pair of applied nyoi staff-head forms for resting the tips of one’s thumb and index finger. This is a yuzamashi , a container used to cool boiled water to just the right temperature for the best flavor when steeping.

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