Jar

Originally in the private collection of F. Cleveland Morgan, volunteer curator of the Museum from 1912 to 1962, this jar transforms a Chinese style and makes it distinctively Korean. Koreans valued porcelain for its pure white surface, but also enjoyed a greater diversity of coloured decoration than that generally made by Chinese kilns. By the early fifteenth century, Koreans kilns were producing white porcelain painted with cobalt blue oxide under the glaze; these ceramics were much sought after, for the rarity of the oxide, the difficult firing technique and the association with China. From the seventeenth century onward iron brown-oxide-painted underglaze became more prominent than the expensive cobalt blue.