Page 101 - Korean Buncheong Ceramics, Samsung Museum Collection (great book)

The decoration on another fifteenth-century bottle (cat. 51, fig. 2.1), also ornamented with
incised lines and a carved background surface, articulates a very different expression of the peony
and its leaves. The decoration on both the round sides of the vessel is marvelously abstract and
very modern to the twenty-first-century eye, defining, as it does, the physical and poetic nature of
the flower distilled into only a few elements. Dramatic in a different way is the peony on a bottle
of the same period, a quintessential example of iron-painted buncheong (cat. 13, fig. 2.6): vibrant,
powerful, and stylized, the motif is a heady exploration of the boundary between representation
and abstraction.

Catalogue 51 Flask-shaped bottle with peony decoration. Korean, Joseon dynasty (1392–1910); second half of the
1
15th century. Buncheong with incised and sgraffito design, H. 9 5 ⁄8 in. (24.3 cm), Diam. of mouth 2 ⁄8 in. (5.2 cm),
Diam. of foot 3 3 ⁄8 in. (8.4 cm). Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul, Treasure no. 1388

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