Haniwa Horse
400s–500s CE
- Medium
- earthenware with traces of pigment
- Classification
- Sculpture
- Dimensions
- Overall: 59.7 x 66 cm (23 1/2 x 26 in.)
- Culture
- Japan, Kofun period (300–710 CE)
- Museum
- Cleveland Museum of Art, Japanese Art
- Credit line
- The Norweb Collection
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Little Ones profiles and older: it shows gentle subjects for the very young. How works are placed
View at the Cleveland Museum of Art
About this work
This horse’s tack, with its round bells, resembles saddlery in fashion in Korea during the 400s–500s CE. Concurrent with mass migration from the Korean Peninsula, tombs covered with large earthen mounds similar to those on the Asian continent began to appear in Japan around the year 300 CE. Called “old mounds” (kofun), their surfaces were covered with hollow clay cylinders (haniwa). Sculptures of animals, buildings, and finally human figures followed, developing over the ensuing three centuries.
