Wine Cup with Children at Play
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.
Details
- Palette
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Select a color to find related artworks.
- Dimensions
- overall: height 0.048 m
- Origin
- China, Jiangxi province, Jingdezhen, Ming dynasty (1368-1644), Chenghua mark and period (1465-1487)
- Department
- Chinese Art
- Holding institution
- Cleveland Museum of Art
- Image provider
- cleveland-museum-of-art
- License
- CC0-1.0
- Credit
- John L. Severance Fund
Art Genome Taxonomy
11 tags
Subject Matter
Visual Qualities
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Highly Detailed Both · 82%
The catalog describes the pictorial decoration as refined and complicated, while the visible surface contains fine contours, figures, foliage, rocks, and repeated border motifs.
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Balance Metadata · 90%
The museum description explicitly characterizes the composition as having perfect compositional balance; the visible motifs are distributed across the curved surface in an orderly arrangement.
Medium and Techniques
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Painting Both · 84%
The decoration is produced by painted cobalt-blue outlines and colored enamel, as described in the catalog and visible on the vessel’s surface.
Time Periods
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15th Century Art Metadata · 99%
The catalog date of 1465–1487 places the object in the fifteenth century.
Geographic Regions
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Chinese Art Metadata · 99%
The museum classifies the work as Chinese Art and identifies its origin as Jingdezhen in Jiangxi province, China.
Materials
Tableware, Vessels, and Objects
Source & rights
Unknown artist. Wine Cup with Children at Play. Cleveland Museum of Art.