Page 73 - Korean Buncheong Ceramics, Samsung Museum Collection (great book)

dynamIc deSIgnS: Iron-paInted p atternS
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Decorations executed in iron-oxide pigment are among the most energetic in the Buncheong
repertoire, with some pieces displaying rapid, gestural strokes of the brush (see cats. 32, 53).
Other examples of iron-painted decoration, such as a fifteenth-century bottle (cat. 39), offer lyrical
vignettes with humorous images rendered with deft and delicate touches of the brush. The famed
kilns of the Gyeryong Mountains at Hakbong-ri, Gongju, in Chungcheong Province, have become
synonymous with iron-painted buncheong, particularly ceramics with rapidly executed, abstract
designs, though the iron-painted type makes up less than half the total output of the Hakbong-ri
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kilns (which included nearly all categories of buncheong, along with porcelain and black-glazed
stoneware). The production of this delightful class of buncheong ware seems to have been limited
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almost exclusively to this region. The iron-painted pieces were among the last of the buncheong
to be produced at the Hakbong-ri sites, from the last quarter of the fifteenth century to the first half
of the sixteenth, when the kilns were converting to the manufacture of porcelain. The clay is much
less refined and darker in color than the material used in earlier examples. Yet the artistic quality
of the iron-painted designs and their raw dynamism and imaginative flair transcend the physical
impurities and coarse construction, resulting in a vigorous, virtuoso effect.

Catalogue 32 Jar with floral scroll decoration (upper view). Korean, Joseon dynasty (1392–1910); late 15th–early 16th century.
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Buncheong with iron-painted design, H. 6 5 ⁄8 in. (16.8 cm), Diam. of mouth 4 ⁄8 in. (10.4 cm). Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art, Seoul

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