The bottle is beautifully potted with the classic round shoulder that gradually swells from the narrow, splayed base. The constricted neck is surmounted by a shallow, incurved, thin lip. Although the carved decoration is subtle, it enhances the shape drawing attention to the curve of the shoulder with a four-trefoil cloud collar radiating from the neck. The decorative collar is infilled with leafy stems within a double-line conforming border. Four large incised floral sprays of alternating lotus and peony on thick stems are incised on the sides of the vessel. Upright overlapping leaves encircle the base above a hastily carved zigzag band. The smooth celadon glaze is a bluish-tinged pale sea-green color with an overall crackle and covers the flat base within the unglazed foot rim where the grey stoneware body is visible.
The bottle is beautifully potted with the classic round shoulder that gradually swells from the narrow, splayed base. The constricted neck is surmounted by a shallow, incurved, thin lip. Although the carved decoration is subtle, it enhances the shape drawing attention to the curve of the shoulder with a four-trefoil cloud collar radiating from the neck. The decorative collar is infilled with leafy stems within a double-line conforming border. Four large incised floral sprays of alternating lotus and peony on thick stems are incised on the sides of the vessel. Upright overlapping leaves encircle the base above a hastily carved zigzag band. The smooth celadon glaze is a bluish-tinged pale sea-green color with an overall crackle and covers the flat base within the unglazed foot rim where the grey stoneware body is visible.
While the shape of the maebyong (meiping in Chinese) here has close relatives among all the major 12th-13th- century Chinese kilns north and south alike, it has a special character of its own that is manifest in its rather relaxed posture, lacking the tension one senses in many Chinese wares. This effect might result from the characteristic swelling shoulder area and the body tapering below and settling gently onto the slightly flaring base. Two maebyong with lower centers of gravity were excavated in the Nanjing region of China while a third, discovered in a tomb in Shijiazhuan city in Hebei province in China, is characterized by its higher shoulders creating a greater sense of rigidity and tension.1 These three vessels are datable to the 13th-14th century and exhibit the innovative Korean inlay technique that had developed by that time. Their discovery in historical Chinese contexts suggests the continued interest in such exotic wares well after the heyday of their popularity in China during the Northern Song period. A maebyong with a vaguely incised lotus design on its body datable probably to the earlier 12th century was found along with three early inlaid Korean celadons within the cargo of thousands of Chinese ceramics retrieved from the wreckage of a cargo ship that had set sail from the Chinese port of Ningbo in 1323 and sank off the Sinan coast of Korea en route to Japan.2 Likely the “old” Korean wares had been sold to a Japanese merchant who was intending them for his clients in Japan.
The watery, fluid appearance of the glaze of the present maebyong and its dense and minute crackle are notable features of the 12th-century celadons produced in Korea. The color here is but one out of a kaleidoscope of greens encountered in these wares. The lightly incised floral decoration is like a whisper echoing faintly through the clear glaze. The fine, even lines of the design were characteristic of a style perfected by Yue potters of southeastern China in the 10th century and resulted in some of their most exquisite products. The very demise of Yue dominance on the stage of celadon production in China was an important catalyst in the development of this signature ware of the Goreyo dynasty.
The actual motifs on the present vessel reflect some of the complexity of the relationship of the Goreyo potters to their Chinese mentors across land and sea. Most compelling is what happened to the styles and traditions when they arrived at this destination. The floral sprays generously spaced on the body of the vessel, for example, are displayed vertically, as if still reaching for the sun. The independence of these branches from one another, not grounded to a base line nor enclosed within a frame or “fence,” is quite different from traditional Chinese composition, compelling evidence that the decorators of these celadons had also journeyed into a separate realm, liberated in important ways from their precursors and foreign models. The airiness and the free-floating nature of the design reemerged in later underglaze- painted porcelains of Korea, once a native Korean style emerged in their blue-and-white porcelains of the 17th century, distinguishing those products in the same way from their Chinese porcelain counterparts.
The “cloud collar” motif draped around the shoulder of the vessel is another example of this independence. It is executed in what at first appears to have been a very careful manner; on closer viewing, the irregularities become apparent. The shapes of the four lappets are not exactly the same; one of the lappets, for example, has a round rather than pointed tip. There is no strict sense of law and order, no force compelling the decorator towards a Chinese concept of perfection. The relaxed aura of these wares very much appealed to the Japanese across the waters who remained until the present, when Western scholars turned their sights on Korea full force, the primary advocates of these Korean wares.
1. The three vessels can be in Zhongguo chutu ciqi quanji, vol. 7: Jiangsu Shanghai, Beijing, 2008, pl. 145-146 and vol. 3: Hebei, pl. 202.
2. For the maebyong see Relics Salvaged from the Seabed off Sinan, (Materials I), Seoul, 1985, pl. 1.