Page 93 - Korean Buncheong Ceramics, Samsung Museum Collection (great book)

hoW to create a pIctorIal Scene
pond Scenery
In contrast to decorations consisting of a single motif in a vacuum or an abstract pattern, some
inlaid buncheong ware displays quasinarrative representations that may be called pictorial, in that
they include scenery, a setting, or other contexts. The depiction of waves in which a dragon-fish
floats on a fifteenth-century bottle is one example (cat. 38). Perhaps the most common such
iconography is pond scenery, where the water is often implied rather than explicitly rendered. The
surrounding landscape usually comprises willow trees, lotuses, or both, as well as one or more
animals such as fish, cranes, and waterfowl. A delightful example is provided by a fifteenth-century
bottle on which large cranes with long, curving necks and not-quite-graceful bodies play amid a
luscious assemblage of lotuses and willow trees (fig. 2.16, cat. 45). The pond scenery, organized
into four intertwined vignettes, fills the circumference of the body. This type of design draws from
earlier inlaid celadon and bronze vessels of the Goryeo period (see fig. 2.17), but the understated
delicacy and narrative sensibility of the prototypes are replaced with a more dramatic, exuberant,
and jumbled effect. Forgoing narrative coherence, the imagery on a fifteenth-century bottle erupts
into a cacophony of boldly articulated motifs that crowd and mold to the circular shape of the
vessel — a cacophony that nonetheless resolves into scenery (cat. 46).

left: Figure 2.16 Detail of catalogue 45, reverse

above: Figure 2.17 Detail of ewer. Korean, Goryeo
dynasty (918–1392); 12th century. Bronze inlaid with
silver. National Museum of Korea, Seoul

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