Korean bowl (1)

[peterp]

Probably Yi dynasty (Choseon) bowl. 19th century? 
Bottom is different from Chinese ones.

Addition:
Bottom color is not true. Image only added to illustrate different base. The image below shows the bowl before breakage, in the real colors.

[Mat]

I think that there is a chance that your bowl is much older, from Goryeo dynasty. As far as I know, this style of decoration was not made in 19th c, but revived only after the Korean war in mid 20th c. The Kintsugi repair seems to indicate that the bowl was in Japan, too, at some stage of it's history. That said, I am not an expert on old Korean celadon, but the modern pieces have a very different bottom, so I think it could be indeed an old example, or at least I would not rule out that possibility.
Regards,
Mat

[Mat]

Sorry, I was confused by your date, 19th c, but that was a typo, right? However I still think it could be Goryeo instead of Yi...

[peterp]

Thanks Mat, I do not know that much about Korean porcelain. Hope you are right.
It is difficult to get good reference on Korean ceramics. The nipple in the center of the bottom would be Yuan, if it were Chinese. But I have no way yet to date it accurately. The bottoms of Korean wares I have seen until now were often quite rough compared to Chinese ones. Thus it is just cautious age estimate.
I did the kintsugi repair myself. Unfortunately it was already broken when I got it. Nice looking sample, though.
Looking forward to your opinion when I post the other two items.

[Stan]

Hi Peter and Mat, this is from a 20th century Korean potter and these are the remnants of not so good wares that did not meet his standards, look closely at the bottoms.

[Stan]

Hi Peter and Mat, concerning Kintsugi art I just watched a video on youtu.be/UWa_MyLpZfQ it shows how to do it and they sell repair kits to do it yourself, the repair showed on the video makes it look easy and the repair looked very good, the one on your bowl looks rather sloppy as if they did not know how to do it professionally, with these kits it could have been done anywhere not just Japan.

[peterp]

Hi Stan, the kits may look simple, but the real difficulty is in the painting and understanding of tree lacquer (Urushi), This is quite different from any other type of coating or gluing material, and it takes a very stable artist's hand to paint it on.  BTW, I do not doubt that much of artistic kintsugi items one sees now on sale was painted with a premixed material, not applied with the method and materials being shown. I see many items coming from Japan that do not look that good. Timing is really all when working with that sort of natural lacquer. Kintsugi is much like western gilding. When you see it being done it looks simple enough, but doing a good gilding job with real materials on porcelain is a different matter.

[peterp]

> from a 20th century Korean potter

Can you provide information on the source of this? Looks as if the bowls were not so new ones. Do you think this is representative of modern Korean porcelain?

I'm afraid the images of the bowl uploaded do not show true colors, especially the bottom (the glaze is not bluish), nor are the ages signs clearly visible. I have difficulties getting a good picture of the crackling and age signs, but this is old. The age signs inside are clear enough.

(added picture of bowl taken before breakage below)

[Stan]

The book is " Korea's Pottery Heritage vol. 1 " by Edward B. Adams page 43.

[peterp]

Thanks Stan. It is almost impossible to get Chinese books on Korean porcelain, and not much more abroad it seems. The few books I have are all in Japanese, with pictures from Japanese and Korean museums. But they are a bit dated.

[Stan]

This book was Published in 1986.