Page 79 - Korean Buncheong Ceramics, Samsung Museum Collection (great book)

irregularities, revealing the charming messiness of the white slip. Such tubular, drum-shaped
bottles were formed vertically on the wheel and thus usually have one rounded end and one flat
one (the original base; see cat. 41); the finished product, with a mouth and optional foot attached
separately, is meant to stand on its side. The intriguing shape of this vessel — there are distant
antecedents in early East Asian pottery such as Han-period earthenware, but counterparts in
Korean or Chinese celadon or porcelain are rare — is well suited to the entire spectrum of decora-
tive modes within the buncheong repertoire. The strong visual and tactile attributes of the brushed
white slip as surface design are also evident on a large sixteenth-century jar, a tour de force of
buncheong ceramics (cat. 14).
Unlike the vessels with brushed white-slip designs, buncheong dipped in and almost entirely
covered with white slip exhibits little surface pattern. The allure of these pieces lies in the creamy
texture of the slip and the contrast between its whiteness and the dark, rough-textured clay body
underneath (usually partially exposed) (see cat. 37). The most straightforward in the intent and impact
of its design, this buncheong type is also the one that most closely resembles undecorated white
porcelain. The shape of the sixteenth-century bottle illustrated here, for example, has parallels in
early Joseon porcelain (see fig. 2.18). Yet as refreshingly appealing as white-slip-dipped buncheong
may be to the modern viewer, it did not have a wide domestic consumer base either geographically
or socially. Most of this type of buncheong was produced in Jeolla Province, whose best-known
region for these kilns was Goheung. White-slip-coated buncheong represented the humble counter-
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part to the dominant white porcelain, which was, by the early sixteenth century, produced in many
regional kilns alongside buncheong and gradually replaced it.
In neighboring Japan, white-slip-dipped buncheong — known as kohiki — was popular precisely
because of its simple, unpretentious quality. This aspect appealed especially to the connoisseurs
and practitioners of the tea ceremony, or chanoyu, in the sixteenth century. The continuing attraction
of buncheong coated in white slip is evident in Japan today, where many contemporary potters look
to this traditional form of Korean ceramics for inspiration (see Soyoung Lee’s essay, “Beyond the
Original: Buncheong Idioms in Japan, 1500–1900, and Contemporary Revivals,” in this volume).

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