Page 427 - Art In The Age Of Exploration (Great Section on Chinese Art Ming Dynasty)

which include the present example, were done in 28l
Chinese style.
The hue and quality of the blue, the style of TEA BOWL, CALLED "KIZAEMON"
painting, and the form of the dragon in almost
late i5th-i6th century
every detail are all but indistinguishable from Korean
Chinese dragons of the Xuande reign-era; were stoneware, slipped and glazed
it not for the character of the clay, the casual diameter 15.3 (6)
treatment of the bottle's foot and base, and the references: New York 1968, 46-47; Jenyns 1971;
appearance of the glaze, the piece could easily be Covell and Yamada 1974, 60-61, pis. 20, 21;
mistaken for Chinese. Gifts of blue-and-white Hayashiya et al. 1974
porcelains presented by the Xuande emperor to Koho-an, Daitoku-ji, Kyoto
the Choson court in 1430 included vessels with
dragon-and-cloud designs, so it is not impossible
that the painter of this piece had an actual Xuande One of a small number of Korean wares adopted
period porcelain close at hand. Unfortunately the for the Tea Ceremony in early times (late six-
Korean potters did not adopt the Chinese practice teenth-seventeenth century), "Kizaemon" is a
of inscribing reign-marks on their ceramics, thus cultural document of importance because of its
making it impossible to tell exactly when such association with Tea and its particular character
fastidious renditions of China's classic blue-and- within that context. Tea bowls of this type are
white style began to be made. M.A.R. generically designated Ido ware; the origin of the
term is unknown but the bowls were made in
Korea, where they were used as rice bowls. There
they were a country form of what is called pun-

focused, giving a purposeful expression to this
majestic symbol of royal goodness and might.
During the fourteenth century Chinese potters
had created an array of cobalt-blue decorated por-
celain that marked the beginning of a new stylistic
direction in Chinese ceramic art and was further-
more a staggering economic success. High quality
cobalt oxide was imported from the Middle East —
a major market for the ware — since local ores
produced less intense and far less brilliant and
attractive blues. During the early Ming, under
enlightened imperial patronage, blue-and-white
ware attained such aesthetic and technical excel-
lence that connoisseurs have ever since considered
that period the classic phase of Chinese blue-
and-white, with wares of the Xuande reign-era
(1426-1435) singled out as supreme.
When Korean potters began to make under-
glaze blue decorated porcelains, they imported
Middle Eastern cobalt from China along with the
technique and current styles. Production was
severely limited, however, by the prohibitive cost
of the cobalt. In fact, in 1461 an attempt was made
to limit the use of blue-and-white wares to the
royal household, with military personnel per-
mitted the use of blue-and-white wine bottles;
awards of cloth or official rank were offered for
presentation to the court of the coveted ware.
Today only a small number of fifteenth-century
examples survive. Some of these were decorated
in a rather spare and sketchy style, anticipating
the major trend in later Choson period blue-and-
white porcelain, but the most ambitious wares,

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