Inlaid Bowl

Description

With a thin foot and flaring mouth, this Korean stoneware bowl is decorated with a bar of abstract ornament around the rim, and inlaid floral designs encircled by white and brownish lines in the interior. The entire bowl is covered with a single and relatively thin layer of grayish-green glaze, compared with multi-layered and rich-colored glaze on Chinese Yue celadon and Ru wares. This bowl is an example of Korean inlaid celadon stoneware, which did not appear until the middle of the twelfth century in the reign of King Uijong (1147–70). The earliest known work is an inlaid celadon bowl with a scrolling floral design excavated from the tomb of Mun Kong-yu, dated to 1159. Inlay, the technique most commonly used to decorate celadon, established a unique and important category of Korean ceramics, and continued to be employed till the end of the Koryŏ dynasty (918–1392). The origins of the technique are not mentioned in written sources, but it is believed that this technique was adopted from the practice of decorating bronze vessels with silver inlay and inlaid lacquerware. The process of inlay involves incising desired designs on the unbaked clay body and filling the carved space with black and/or white slip, after which a translucent celadon glaze is applied and the vessel fired. Finest works of celadon ware with inlaid decorations present their exquisite beauty through natural shapes, clean glaze, and pictorial designs which are often in white and black against gray-green glaze. In this bowl, the brownish coloration of the inlay may owe to the presence of iron oxide, as well as to firing conditions inside the kiln.