Buncheong Openwork Vase Set: Grand-Scale, Peony Motif with Three-Color Slip, Unglazed Finish

This set is chosen by those who understand that refinement does not always arrive through sheen, but sometimes through the honesty of clay.

"The flowers seem to rise from the earth itself, carrying both weight and bloom."

Created by the Icheon ceramic artist Geunjeong Lee Sang-bong, this grand-scale Buncheong vase set unites the maebyeong and jubyeong forms in a work of unusual technical discipline and quiet presence. It marks a new direction in the artist’s practice: while remaining faithful to the character of Buncheong, the vessels are completed without glaze, so that the surface retains the firmness of fired ceramic while preserving the warmth, dryness, and grain of the clay.

Their making is inseparable from their effect. After the first firing, three colours of slip are applied to articulate the peony branches, the white petals, the red stamens, and selected red leaves. The surface is then carved by hand, allowing the natural tone of the Buncheong body to reappear between and around the forms. This is why the decoration feels neither added nor imposed. The peonies appear to emerge from within the vessel itself, released through labour rather than placed upon it.

Two demanding techniques are brought into careful balance here. The carved relief gives the floral forms their breadth, contour, and rhythmic density, while the openwork piercing cuts through parts of the clay body to create intervals of shadow, air, and light. This second process requires particular control. As the clay contracts during firing, any imbalance in timing or structure may lead to warping or collapse. The clarity of the finished set therefore speaks not only of invention, but of restraint, precision, and endurance.

What gives the work its particular depth is the meeting of two seemingly contrary qualities. Buncheong has long been valued for its unaffected, grounded beauty and its closeness to the hand. The peony, by contrast, occupies a place of richness in Korean visual culture, carrying associations of prosperity, honour, beauty, and fullness of life. Here, those qualities are not in conflict. The unglazed Buncheong body tempers the abundance of the motif, while the peony lifts the quiet plainness of the clay into something more expansive. The harmony lies precisely in that balance.

The three-colour slip strengthens this effect. White petals open the composition and lend it breadth. Red accents gather the eye and give warmth to the flowering surface. The darker branches and leaves provide structure, preventing the design from dissolving into softness. Even at this generous scale, the composition remains measured, with fullness held firmly within order.

The two vessel forms extend that sense of balance. The maebyeong, broader through the shoulder and more contained in stance, gives the set a feeling of weight and inwardness. The jubyeong, with its lifted neck and more tapering movement, introduces height and release. Together they form not a repetition, but a response: one holds, the other rises.

Without glaze, the surface absorbs light rather than reflecting it. This gives the vases a muted authority that suits Buncheong particularly well. Their beauty is not dependent on brilliance, but on depth of surface, carved edge, and the quiet life of the clay itself. For that reason, they reveal more over time. One first sees the peonies; then the relief, the piercing, the restraint, and the discipline that hold the whole together.

This is a set of floral abundance shaped through control, and of technical ambition grounded in humility. It carries the richness of the peony without losing the human warmth that gives Buncheong its lasting voice.

Dimensions

• Mae Byeong
  Height- 44 cm (17.32 inch)
  Diameter- 24 cm (9.45 inch)
• Ju Byeong
  Height- 42.5 cm (16.73 inch)
  Diameter- 21 cm (8.27 inch)
  

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