Buncheong vs Sumi-e
粉青沙器 / 水墨画
Buncheong comes from Ceramic Styles and Sumi-e from East Asian Painting. One is style and the other technique. They are reached for with some of the same intent, which is where they get confused.
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.
Sumi-e
With only ink gradations and emptiness, keeps a subject's presence, speed and distance rather than its shape.
| Buncheong | Sumi-e | |
|---|---|---|
| Era | 14th–16th century | Tang dynasty–present |
| Family | Ceramic Styles | East Asian Painting |
| Kind | Style | Technique |
| 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 | Ink gradation / Dry-brush scratch / Vast emptiness / The speed of one stroke |
| 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 | Presence and depth from few elements · Giving quiet brands and cultural projects room to breathe |
| 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. | A light mincho or brush letters, sparingly |
| 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. | Reserve as much for the unpainted as for the subject |
| 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. | Ink, unbleached paper, absorption, bleed |
| Caution | Even out the brush marks and the record of speed disappears, leaving a merely white pot. | Not a black brush texture dropped in. Design the stroke order and the meaning of the emptiness. |