Page 117 - Korean Buncheong Ceramics, Samsung Museum Collection (great book)

Figure 3.3 Tea bowl with decoration
of chrysanthemums (Mishima-oke).
Joseon dynasty (1392–1910); second
half of the 16th century. Stoneware with
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inlaid and stamped design, H. 3 ⁄2 in.
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(8.9 cm), Diam. of rim 4 ⁄2 in. (11.3 cm),
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Diam. of foot 2 ⁄2 in. (6.3 cm). Tokugawa
Art Museum, Nagoya

to refer to this style of Korean-made bowls, that is, those with inlaid or stamped decoration. The
cylindrical shape of the bowl is unusual for buncheong ware; the overall design layout, too, is
not standard, though the specific motifs — the densely packed, miniature chrysanthemum blooms
in particular, as well as the linear geometric patterns — are typical of buncheong’s decorative
repertoire. This and other similarly shaped inlaid and/or stamped buncheong-style tea bowls in Japa-
nese collections (they are not found in Korea today) may possibly have been made during the late
sixteenth century specifically for export to an elite group of Japanese tea connoisseurs, including
members of the merchant class, who also distributed the vessels used in chanoyu.
A cylindrical seventeenth-century tea bowl in the Metropolitan Museum (cat. 59) conjures
comparisons to fifteenth-century inlaid and stamped buncheong ware generally and the sixteenth-
century Mishima-oke specifically. Here, too, the individual motifs, particularly the small chrysan-
themum blooms and the rows of circles, are conscious references to early buncheong vessels.
Both the execution of the motifs and their arrangement are rather more deliberate, even more
self-conscious, than on the early buncheong prototypes. Moreover, the tea bowl’s clay, the overall
coloration and design, and the unusual way in which the foot is finished point to an early
seventeenth-century date and to an identity as a vessel made specifically to Japanese tastes for
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export to that market, rather than intended as a domestic object in Joseon Korea. There are also
those ceramics — made in Korea during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries
exclusively for Japanese purchasers — whose decoration is carved or stamped very deeply into the

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