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Reinventing the Past: Antiquarianism in East Asian Art and Visual Culture—Part 2 |
< Back Descended from Korean Pots: Ceramic Traditions Re-imagined in Edo Japan and Re-claimed in Modern Korea Soyoung Lee Metropolitan Museum of Art This paper re-examines the identity and significance of a group of tea bowls known collectively as "Kōrai-jawan"—a very broad category of Korean ceramics that is inextricably linked to the Japanese tea ceremony. I shall examine the path of their popularity and their transformed functions and status in Momoyama (1573-1615) and Edo (1615-1868) Japan. Given the range of styles within Kōrai-jawan, I shall focus primarily on Ido, Mishima and Kōhiki, perhaps the most recognized and esteemed among its myriad sub-categories (the latter two are characterized by the application of a white slip and are of a style known in Korean as Punch'ŏng ware). Part of the investigation will involve how these Korean "antiques" inspired later Japanese domestic ceramic production. The paper shall extend into our times with a look at the ways in which these traditional forms have been appropriated, re-created, and in some cases re-claimed, by modern and contemporary Japanese and Korean potters. Among the knowing practitioners and aficionado of traditional Japanese tea ceremony, Kōrai-jawan has elicited a special reverence and affection. As ceramics made in Korea—during the Chosŏn period (1392-1910), not Koryŏ (918-1392), as the name would indicate—that found their way to Japan, Kōrai-jawan has since occupied a much more prominent place within Japanese culture than in Korea. Both the term and the concept are Japanese constructs. Perhaps the most fascinating thing about Kōrai-jawan—especially its subsequent manifestations in Edo-period tea ware and in modern and contemporary Japanese and Korean ceramics—is that although the initial appeal lay primarily in its newness, its continuing allure has been rooted in antiquarianism, nostalgia, and cultural identity. How ironic that in Korea, where evidence (either as actual pots or as a cultural awareness) of most types of Kōrai-jawan have been scant, potters have been producing modern Ido and other old-Korea-filtered-through-Japan bowls since the post-Japanese Colonial period as a form of re-capturing a lost national identity. Through the case of the Kōrai-jawan phenomenon, this paper hopes to touch on certain broader questions regarding antiquarianism. How was the past visualized and reinvented? To what degree and in what ways did antiquarianism shape artistic creation? How has appreciation and nostalgia for a certain historical narrative and cultural moment informed our modern perspective? What did the chain of Japanese and Koreans—potters, connoisseurs, cultural figures, and art-historians whose interests converged around ceramics or tea—seek in antiquity and antiquarianism? |
