Wine Cup with Children at Play
1465–87
- Medium
- porcelain with underglaze blue and overglaze enamel decoration, docai ("joined colors") ware
- Classification
- Ceramic
- Dimensions
- Overall: 4.8 cm (1 7/8 in.)
- Culture
- China, Jiangxi province, Jingdezhen, Ming dynasty (1368-1644), Chenghua mark and period (1465-1487)
- Museum
- Cleveland Museum of Art, Chinese Art
- Credit line
- John L. Severance Fund
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Teens profiles and older: its subject is for older viewers (war, death, the Passion, drink or the like). How works are placed
View at the Cleveland Museum of Art
About this work
This delicate wine cup, only two inches high, exhibits free, spontaneous drawing as well as perfect compositional balance over its small surface area. The motifs were outlined with cobalt blue; the piece was then glazed and fired in the normal way for making the blue-and-white ware. After firing, the outline painting was completed with colored enamels over the glaze. The piece was fired the second time. The pictorial decoration is refined and complicated; the porcelain body is of exceptionally high quality and is thin, translucent, and light in weight.
