# Boat-Shaped Bowl with Plovers

- By: Seifū Yohei III (Japanese, 1851–1914)
- Date: 1893–97
- Medium: Stoneware with crackled glaze and overglaze color enamel and gold
- Classification: Ceramic
- Dimensions: height: 5 cm (1 15/16 in.); length: 17 cm (6 11/16 in.); depth: 8.5 cm (3 3/8 in.)
- Culture: Japan, Meiji period (1868–1912)
- Credit line: Gift of James and Christine Heusinger
- Museum: [Cleveland Museum of Art](https://clevelandart.org/art/2022.183)
- Rights: [Public domain (CC0)](https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/)
- Picture: https://openaccess-cdn.clevelandart.org/2022.183/2022.183_web.jpg
- Who can see it: Little Ones profiles and older (museums give no ratings; placed by Invisible Network from the museum's own words)

Overglaze color enamels create a seascape made complete by the bowl’s boat shape. The bowl’s form inserts a human presence into the scene, much in the way rusu mōyō is used in paintings to suggest people just out of view. Rusu mōyō is a pictorial device by which the presence of someone physically absent from an image is conveyed through the depiction of clothing or other items.

The inside of the bowl has a scene of plovers flying through the sky over a profusion of seaweed in sand below. In addition to the black, gray, and green of the overglaze elements, warm pink banding and mottling in the clay come through the glaze and are remarkably effective at suggesting the seashore.