White Porcelain Bottle with Grass and Insect Design in Underglaze Iron, Copper, and Cobalt Blue

Joseon white porcelain generally seeks the beauty of simple form and decoration, and tends to restrain the use of many colours. In that light, decorating a single piece with copper red, iron brown and cobalt blue together, as on this bottle 42.3 cm high, 4.1 cm across the mouth and 13.3 cm across the base, is highly unusual. It has a long slender neck, a full body and a rather low foot. The foot is marked off as clearly as a drawn line, and the mouth is cut straight, giving it a sharp edge — a rare form, since most white porcelain bottles of the early eighteenth century have a mouth that flares or rolls slightly outward. Chrysanthemums and orchids are painted front and back, with bees and butterflies at play. The decoration is in relief: the orchids coloured in cobalt, the chrysanthemum flowers in copper red, their stems and leaves in iron, and the bees and butterflies in iron or copper. Large among Joseon porcelains of its kind, with fine glaze, well-judged proportions and refined decoration, it is thought to have been made at Gwangju, Gyeonggi, in the first half of the eighteenth century.

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Where it is

Region

Seongbuk-gu, Seoul

Designation

National Treasure · 국보