Page 134 - Korean Buncheong Ceramics, Samsung Museum Collection (great book)

kYoTo ware wiTh inlaid designs
Revivals of white-slip ornamentation were concentrated in Kyushu, yet throughout the Edo period
inlaid and stamped stoneware was also produced at other kilns in the archipelago, some of which
had no direct ties to immigrant Korean potters. The more widespread revivals of select buncheong
idioms — inlay, stamping, and brushed white slip — were probably spurred and influenced by the
popularity of Korean-made tea wares manufactured at the Busan kilns solely for export to Japan
(ca. 1639–1718), as well as by late-Edo antiquarian tastes and collecting practices that made revivals
of old buncheong ware and of seventeenth-century Korean export ware from the Busan kilns
fashionable. Following such trends, Edo-period potters in Kyoto, from unknown artisans to named
masters like Kiyomizu Rokubei I (1737–1799) and his descendants, and those of the eminent Raku
workshop, dabbled in interpretative revisitings of inlaid ceramics.
Probably belonging to the second half of the seventeenth century, the earlier wave of the
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Kyoto revivals, is a tea bowl with an inlaid and stamped decoration of chrysanthemums (cat. 65).
Its refined, soft beige clay and distinguished construction point to its Kyoto lineage, while the
decoration evidences a conscious imitation of the contemporary tea bowls with similar designs that
were made at the Busan kilns in Korea for export to Japan (see fig. 3.5). A tea bowl with an inlaid
decoration of a standing crane (cat. 66) by Rokubei I exemplifies later Kyoto revivals of the buncheong
idiom. Though initially wheel-formed, the tea bowl was further shaped by hand; the clay was carved
away around the base, emphasizing the bowl’s materiality and handmade quality. The standing
crane is simply articulated; the contours outlining its body are inlaid in white, while its beak and tail
feathers are painted in iron pigment; there is an identical crane on the opposite side of the bowl.
The design on this vessel may ultimately be traced back to the ubiquitous cranes of Goryeo celadon,
but filtered through an Edo-period Japanese sensibility. Rokubei’s tea bowl is, in fact, a copy of a
late seventeenth-century Busan kiln product (fig. 3.12), and the model he reprised was itself a
revival of earlier prototypes — inlaid Goryeo celadon and fifteenth- and sixteenth-century revivalist
inlaid celadon exported to Japan. The master affirmed his place in this prestigious lineage by
leaving his mark — literally: his seal is stamped near the base (fig. 3.13).
By the nineteenth century, imitations, or revivals, of white-slip-decorated Korean ceramics
had spread to various parts of Japan, including kilns with neither direct nor indirect associations
with Korean potters. These included not only the kilns at Kyoto, as discussed above, but also
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those of Seto — one of the important centers that produced ceramics catering to the wabi tea
aesthetic of Momoyama-period Japan. In the later Edo period, the Seto kilns would manufacture a
wide and eclectic range of styles, as exemplified by an unusual semioval vessel inlaid with a cross
design (fig. 3.14). Many of the bowls similar to this one in shape and decoration are believed to be
Seto products, while others are held to be Hagi ware. Besides the technique of inlay, these vessels’

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