The Cleveland Museum of Art
Collection Online as of March 16, 2026
Pheasants in Cherry
1900–1914
(Japanese, 1851–1914)
height: 39 cm (15 3/8 in.); Diameter: 28.5 cm (11 1/4 in.)
Dudley P. Allen Fund 2024.36
Location: Not on view
Did You Know?
The unusually large scale of this piece and the fact that he signed the base “Made by Seifū of Great Japan” also suggest that it was made for public display.Description
Like the design of Flower Vase with Phoenix in Paulownia (CMA 2022.199), the pair of pheasants in a dramatic landscape setting on this vase was created by adding clay to the surface of the clay body and then molding and carving it. Here, instead of a typical white clay, Yohei III has used an ivory clay. He then added gradated pink around the complex design, which with its multitude of cherry blossoms must have been painstaking to mask with precision. For the birds’ eyes, he added a touch of yellow. He then fired the vase with an allover translucent cream glaze. The resulting kanpakuji piece is one in which an academic subject long favored by painters of the Kano school for screen and sliding door paintings in important buildings, that of impressively sized birds within a scene of precipitous, angled rock faces and twisting trees, is made soft and ethereal while retaining a sense of gravitas.- 2022–2024James and Christine Heusinger, Berea, OH, sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art2024–The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH
- Maezaki, Shinya and Sinéad Vilbar. Colors of Kyoto: The Seifū Yohei Ceramic Studio. Cleveland, OH: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 2023. Mentioned and Reproduced: pp. 140–143, cat. no. 56
- Colors of Kyoto: The Seifū Yohei Ceramic Studio. The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH (organizer) (August 19, 2023-March 10, 2024).
- {{cite web|title=Pheasants in Cherry|url=false|author=Seifū Yohei III|year=1900–1914|access-date=16 March 2026|publisher=Cleveland Museum of Art}}
Source URL:
https://www.clevelandart.org/art/2024.36