Cord-marked round-bottomed jar with wide, flared mouth
Korean
Description
The spotty patches of shiny gray-green on the shoulder of this jar were caused by wood ash floating through the kiln. When ash alights on the hot surface of a pot, it vitrifies and produces an uneven glaze. The glazing is thus an unintended side effect of the firing process. Later, Korean potters would learn to control ash-glazing effects.
Maribeth Graybill, The Enduring Art of the Korean Potter, December 12, 2004-November 6, 2005
Subject Matter:
The grayish-blue stoneware is one of the earthenware of the Iron ages. Its clay is similar to that of the reddish brown earthenware. But Its hardness is harder. The design is usually cross stripes or check. It was almost excavated in the Iron age shell mounds of the southern coast of the Korea.
Physical Description:
This grayish-blue stoneware jar has a globular body and short, flared neck. The entire surface of the body is adorned with wave pattern and encircled with many thin incised lines. The base is flat.
This is a dark gray, long-necked, high-fired stoneware jar with a wide mouth. Its neck is widely flared, while an olive brown natural glaze has formed on the inner surface of the neck and on the shoulder. Shallow incised horizontal lines encircle the outer surface of the neck. The neck shows traces of rotation and water smoothing. The body is widest at its upper-middle part, and a series of incised horizontal lines surrounds the body in three places in its upper part. The areas in between these lines are decorated with wave designs created by combs with many teeth. The vessel originally featured a paddled pattern consisting of diagonally parallel lines along the upper-middle part of the body, and a diagonal crosshatch paddled pattern right below. However, these designs were erased by subsequent rotation and water smoothing to be finally replaced with the incised horizontal lines and wave designs.
[Korean Collection, University of Michigan Museum of Art (2017) p. 49]
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