White Porcelain Jar with Plum and Bamboo Design in Underglaze Iron

A Joseon white porcelain jar, 41.3 cm high, 19 cm across the mouth and 21.5 cm across the base. The rim is rolled outward, and the round body swells fully from the slope of the neck before narrowing gradually. Clouds and petals are painted round the neck and shoulder in dark pigment with shading, and a continuous wave pattern round the lower body. Bamboo is painted on one side of the body and an old plum trunk on the other. The glaze, milky white with a blue tinge, is applied evenly all over and has a soft lustre. The form appears in sixteenth-century buncheong ware and is especially like jars of Ming China. The patterns on the shoulder and lower body continue into those of the early seventeenth century. The plum and bamboo and the bright glaze suggest it was made in the later sixteenth century at the Gwaneum-ri kiln in the Gwangju area of Gyeonggi. The painting of plum and bamboo is so skilled that it seems the work of a court painter. An early example of white porcelain painted in iron, this jar, with its confident, full form and its accomplished plum and bamboo, is an outstanding work in which pattern and form go well together.

AI Translation

Where it is

Region

Yongsan-gu, Seoul

Designation

National Treasure · 국보