White Porcelain Jar with Autumn Landscape Design in Underglaze Cobalt Blue

This white porcelain jar with a design of an autumn moon over Lake Dongting in underglaze cobalt blue is a bottle with a sturdy cylindrical body and a wide, flaring mouth; because it resembles a rice-cake mallet (tteokme), it is also popularly called a "tteokme bottle". This bottle is presumed to have served as a flower vase; only a small number were made during the Joseon period, and very few examples survive today. On the surface, a landscape painting is boldly spread across the entire body in vivid cobalt-blue pigment: one side depicts a pavilion and flags set atop a cliff, and to its left, against a backdrop of a round moon in the sky and the distant Three Mountain Peaks (Samsanbong), the foreground shows a scene of boating and a riverside village with a moored boat. Landscape paintings of this type became highly fashionable as decoration on white porcelain produced at the Bunwon official kiln in Gwangju, Gyeonggi Province, in the late 18th century; in this piece the brushwork and composition are so outstanding that it can be presumed to have been painted by a court painter of the Dohwaseo, the royal bureau of painting. The surface is covered with a clear, transparent white porcelain glaze tinged with blue, a glaze colour also characteristic of white porcelain made around the late 18th century. The foot is an inward-cut type formed by hollowing out the inside of the base in a rounded shape, with a narrow contact surface and neat, precise trimming. The glaze was applied even to the inner base of the foot, and fine sand was used as a spacer beneath it during firing. It is a work notable for its bold, open form and its outstanding painterly skill.

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Where it is

Region

Yongsan-gu, Seoul

Designation

Treasure · 보물