An incised celadon-glazed 'lotus' bottle vase and cover, Goryeo dynasty, 12th / 13th century

Collection of Baron Hayashi Gonsuke (1860-1939) (according to label).

The technique of making celadon-glazed ceramics was introduced from China to Korea in the 9th and 10th centuries, most likely through Yue wares from southeastern China. By the early 12th century, Goryeo celadons had become renowned for their unique aesthetic and exceptional blue-green, jade-like glazes. Xu Jing (1091-1153), a Chinese scholar-official who accompanied an envoy from the Northern Song emperor Huizong’s court to Korea in 1123 remarked, ‘As for celadons, the Koreans call them “kingfisher” colored [wares]…In recent years, their manufacture has been skilled (qiao) and, moreover, their color is beautiful (jia)’ (Xuanhe fengshi Gaoli tujing [Illustrated Record of the Chinese Embassy to the Goryeo Court during the Xuanhe Era]). Another commentator known under his sobriquet Taiping Laoren, who was roughly contemporaneous with Xu Jing, noted that Goryeo celadons were ‘first under Heaven’.

The basic form of the present vase derives from bottles produced in the Yue kilns, and recalls the ‘holy water’ bottles seen in Buddhist sculpture. It may have been used in a ritual context to hold water or wine, and is rare for its octagonal faceted neck and intact lid. For a bottle of similar shape, incised with a more stylized floral motif and lacking the cover, see one in the Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland (accession no. 1921.622). Another with a cylindrical neck and a lotus bud-form cover is preserved in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (accession no. 13.1559a-b), illustrated in Jane Portal, MFA Highlights Arts of Korea, Boston, 2012, p. 80. A further example is in the Miho Museum, Kōka (object no. 00002097e). Compare two vases with inlaid floral motifs: the first in the Pola Museum of Art, Hakone (accession no. 006-0559), the second in the Museum of Oriental Ceramics, Osaka (accession no. 01373).

Related vases also appear with faceted bodies. See, for example, one in the Museum of Oriental Ceramics, Osaka (accession no. 00771), one in the Horim Museum, Seoul (treasure no. 1454), and one in the National Museum of Korea, Seoul, published in Oriental Ceramics: The World’s Great Collections: National Museum of Korea, vol. 2, Tokyo, 1976, monochrome pl. 27.

For related bottle vases with slightly thicker necks, compare one in the collection of the British Museum, London (accession no. 1913,1213.1), another in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge (accession no. C.425-1984), and one in the Princeton University Art Museum, Princeton (accession no. y1961-61).