Buncheong vs Goryeo Celadon
粉青沙器 / 高麗青磁
Korean wares with white inlaid lines in a grayish body, sharing the same quiet skin of green and white.
How to tell them apart. In celadon the line sinks beneath a clear green glaze. In Buncheong the brush marks and the skipped patches of white slip stay on the surface.
Buncheong
Buncheong is Korean stoneware whose bluish grey body is covered with white slip, and its name shortens a phrase used by the art historian Go Yuseop. The group is sorted by how the slip is applied, through inlay, stamping, sgraffito, incising, iron painting, brushed slip and dipped slip. Because the coating is never even, the marks of the hand stay on the finished pot.
Goryeo Celadon
The main ceramic style of Korea's Goryeo dynasty, built around glazes that range from green to bluish, the finest of which was called bisaek, or jade colour. The clay body carries traces of iron and fires a grayish white, which sets it apart from the pure white porcelain of the same centuries. Because the glaze stays translucent, inlaid decoration cut into the body and filled with white and red slip reads as if held under water.
| Buncheong | Goryeo Celadon | |
|---|---|---|
| Era | 14th–16th century | 918–1392 |
| Family | Ceramic Styles | Ceramic Styles |
| Kind | Style | Style |
| Cues | White slip lies over a bluish grey body, and the unevenness of the coating is the pattern / On brushed pieces the bristle tracks run in one direction as a white band / On stamped pieces small chrysanthemums are pressed edge to edge and filled with white slip, leaving rows of white dots / On dipped pieces one hard line marks how deep the pot went into the slip, with grey body showing below it | A translucent glaze running from green to bluish over a grayish white body / Inlaid lines of white and red slip sitting visibly below the glaze surface / Incising, relief carving and openwork used together on one vessel / Small passages of iron or copper pigment painting, dark brown or red, on the green ground |
| Best used for | When tableware or bottles of one shape should each carry a different surface · When stamped repetition and loose handwork have to share one pot in only white and grey | Fixing the green range as a colour reference for an exhibition or catalogue of Korean ceramics · Translating the look of pattern sunk beneath a translucent layer into print finishing or screen layers |
| Type | Lettering is not the subject. Put a mark or a date in as a thin incised line filled with white slip, at the same weight as the drawn lines. | The vessel itself carries almost no lettering. If a mark or a label is needed, set it small in a fine serif with thin vertical strokes, clear of the ornament's empty ground. |
| Composition | Decorate only the faces that are seen and leave the base and footring bare. Build in three bands: one line at the rim, the main motif on the body, and white left alone. | Run narrow bands at the rim and foot and leave the wide body largely open. Scatter motifs on a diagonal rather than symmetrically so the void carries the piece. |
| Material | Throw a bluish grey clay body, then brush the white slip on or dip the whole pot. Carve, stamp and scrape the slip away to move the white around, then glaze clear and fire. Stop short of a full white so the grey body still shows through. | Cover a grayish white body carrying trace iron with a translucent glaze between green and blue green. Cut the pattern into the body, fill it with white and red slip, then glaze over so it sinks. |
| Caution | Even out the brush marks and the record of speed disappears, leaving a merely white pot. | Flattening bisaek into a generic green makes the inlay read as printed on the surface and destroys the depth the style depends on. |