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    Korean Ceramics: The Beauty of Natural Forms
    Korean Ceramics: The Beauty of Natural Forms
    Korean Ceramics: The Beauty of Natural Forms
    Ebook183 pages1 hour

    Korean Ceramics: The Beauty of Natural Forms

    By Robert Koehler

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    The most well-known Korean ceramics are the celadon of the Goryeo Dynasty (918-1392) and the white porcelain of the ensuing Joseon Dynasty (1392-1910). [...] The celadons of Goryeo, their grace and color tinged with feminine beauty, symbolized an aristocratic Buddhist culture, while the white porcelains from the Joseon period are thought to typify the bureaucratic and scholarly Confucian society and were essentially masculine in tone, vigorous and orderly. [...] Korea's traditional ceramic wares serve as a barometer for understanding Korean culture in that they most accurately reflect Korean aesthetics and the Korean worldview.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSeoul Selection
    Release dateSep 7, 2015
    ISBN9781624120466
    Korean Ceramics: The Beauty of Natural Forms

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      Korean Ceramics - Robert Koehler

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      Interest in Korean ceramics developed slowly in the West, and as a result they are little known by Western people, except for those who have specialized knowledge of Korea. Two major factors lie at the root of this problem: First, the failure of many Westerners to recognize the beauty of Korean pottery; and second, a dearth of publications in Western languages on Korean art prior to the 1960s. Both of these are closely intertwined.

      It is perhaps William Bowyer Honey, keeper of ceramics at the The Victoria and Albert Museum in London, who should be credited with being the first scholar to truly appreciate the beauty of Korean pieces—celadons as well as Joseon wares. Not only did he value the objects for their decoration and the color of their glaze, but in his ability to discern their overall aesthetic qualities he seems to have discovered the essence of Korean ceramics. In his book on Far Eastern ceramics he writes: The best Korean wares are not only original; they are the most gracious and unaffected pottery ever made. They have every virtue that pottery can have. Their shapes are simple, characteristically beautiful in proportion and outline, flowering easily and naturally into plastic and other decoration, incised or carved or inlaid, of unsurpassed beauty and strength. This Korean pottery in fact reaches heights hardly attained even by the Chinese. It has at all times a great dignity, a quality which is said to be in accord with the character of the Korean people.¹

      Buncheong Bottle, Joseon Dynasty

      Celadon Bottle, Goryeo Dynasty

      White Porcelain Jar, Joseon Dynasty, Treasure No.1424 (Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art)

      APPRECIATION FOR JOSEON CERAMICS

      Honey was in fact the first to draw attention to Joseon ceramics in his presentation titled Korean Wares of the Yi Dynasty, delivered to the Oriental Ceramic Society in London in 1944. Incidentally, it marked the firstever paper on Korean ceramics to be presented to the Society. Honey was greatly aware of the lack of interest in these pieces, which often looked less than perfect; he knew that the flawlessness achieved in Chinese wares was highly praised by Westerners, and that in comparison Joseon pieces would always seem inferior. He therefore began his paper by questioning to what extent, if at all, refinement is a necessary quality of good pottery, and instead advocates the celebration of creative achievement, where everything is new and comparable. Calling special attention the boldness and vitality of modeling, Honey stated that Yi Dynasty wares are beautiful, and beautiful in the most unusual way.²

      Western interest in Korean ceramics initially seemed to end with celadons; those from the Joseon Dynasty received only scant consideration. They were often dismissed as coarse and without distinction. Though a few English connoisseurs expressed interest in the field, it was Japanese scholars such as Soetsu Yanagi who most fervently expressed their love of these later Korean wares. Yanagi later introduced Bernard Leach, the English potter, to the intrinsic beauty of these pieces.

      White Porcelain Bottle, Joseon Dynasty, Treasure No.1054, National Museum of Korea

      Bernard Leach’s Praise of the Korean Ceramics Spirit

      Whereas most Westerners regarded Joseon wares as being of inferior quality, Bernard Leach found them fascinating and highly inspirational. Leach has been regarded as one of the most significant and influential artist-potters of the 20th century, mainly due to his crucial influence on public attitudes toward crafts. His lifelong interest in the East was of paramount importance to his work. Having spent the first ten years of his life in the Far East, Leach later returned to Japan in 1909, where he learned the craft of pottery making from eminent Japanese potters such as Tomimoto Kenkichi, Ogata Kenzan and Hamada Shoji. Yet it was his friendship with the scholar Soetsu Yanagi that came to have a critical impact on the way in which Leach viewed and produced ceramics. As one of the leading connoisseurs of Korean art at the time, Yanagi never ceased advocating the uniqueness and beauty of Korean objects. He was also among the first Japanese to appreciate the special qualities of Joseon wares, of which he wrote extensively.

      Having been taught by Yanagi, Leach adopted the Oriental as opposed to the Western way of viewing ceramics, regarding a pot as a whole rather than emphasizing its separate aspects, such as the glaze, color, potting, and so forth. Only in this way did he feel it was possible to perceive the spirit or essence radiating from the piece. Yanagi and Leach traveled to Korea together several times, enabling Leach to not only view a wide range of wares but also personally experience the country. This was extremely important to Leach, for he believed that a potter’s traditions are part of a country’s cultural heritage. From this point of view, the characteristics of the people and of the pots they produced cannot be separated; rather they form two parts of a whole entity. On seeing a collection of Joseon pots, he commented: These Korean pots grow like wild flowers. Their naive abstractions and formalizations spring from quite another approach to living, a complete antithesis to our self-consciousness and calculation. The Koreans and their pots are childlike, spontaneous and trusting.³

      BERNARD LEACH, LUCIE RIE AND THE MOON JAR

      The British Museum’s Korea collection is a magnificent example of the ceramic art of the Joseon Dynasty. At this time, plain white porcelain represented the epitome of austere Confucian taste. As the scholar Yi Kyu-gyong wrote, the greatest merit of white porcelain lies in its absolute purity. The Moon Jar also testifies to the admiration of two of the greatest twentieth-century British potters for Korean wares. It was bought in an antique shop in Seoul by Bernard Leach (1887–1979) in 1935 during one of his visits from Japan. He gave it to his favorite student, Lucie Rie (1902–1995), who on her death bequeathed it to Leach’s widow, Janet Leach. The British Museum acquired it from her estate in 1999. They also acquired a letter from Bernard Leach to Rie, in which he asks her to collect the jar from a friend’s house and look after it during the Second World War (1939–1945).

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