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

This set is chosen by those who understand that the most persuasive beauty is often held in restraint rather than display.

"The flowers do not sit upon the vessels; they seem to have been coaxed slowly out of the clay."

Created by the Icheon ceramic artist Geunjeong Lee Sang-bong, this large-scale ceramic set unites the maebyeong and jubyeong in a work that is both materially grounded and technically ambitious. Its importance lies not only in motif or scale, but in the decision to depart from a conventional finished surface. Using a clay body associated with Buncheong ware, the artist leaves the vessels unglazed after firing. They were made this way so that the tactile and structural truth of the clay would remain present, rather than being sealed beneath a polished skin.

This choice governs how the work is seen. An unglazed surface absorbs light instead of casting it back. Because of this, the vessels do not announce themselves through sheen. They ask instead for slower looking: for the eye to register grain, incision, relief, dryness, and the subtle depth of the fired body. What first appears floral gradually reveals itself as a study in material discipline.

The decoration follows the same logic. After an initial firing, three colours of slip are laid onto the surface to define the peony branches, white petals, red stamens, and selected leaves. The body is then carved by hand so that the clay reappears between and around the motif. This is why the flowers do not feel pasted onto the vessel. They were made this way so that ornament and form would not stand apart from one another. The motif is embedded in the vessel’s skin, and the vessel in turn seems to carry the memory of its own making.

The openwork sections introduce a second layer of difficulty and meaning. Relief carving gives the floral forms their contour and density, but piercing creates interruption: openings of shadow, breath, and light בתוך the mass of clay. Structurally, this is a precarious act. The more the body is cut, the more carefully drying and firing must be judged to prevent movement or collapse. Yet visually, this risk is precisely what allows the work to breathe. The flowers gather fullness, but the pierced intervals keep that fullness from becoming closed or heavy.

The peony has long occupied a place of honour in Korean visual culture, signifying prosperity, beauty, dignity, and the fullness of life. In many works it appears with overt splendour. Here, however, it is deliberately moderated. The artist appears to have made the work this way in order to test whether the peony could retain its cultural richness while entering a more austere material language. The result is compelling because neither side overwhelms the other. The motif prevents the clay from becoming mute; the unglazed body prevents the motif from becoming decorative excess.

The pairing of vessel types sharpens this reading. The maebyeong gathers mass and concentration, its fuller body giving the composition a sense of inward gravity. The jubyeong rises more narrowly and releases the eye upward. Seen together, the two forms create a measured exchange between containment and extension. One vessel seems to hold the floral world close; the other lets it ascend. The set therefore unfolds not as duplication, but as conversation.

What finally distinguishes the work is the way technical experiment is made to serve visual quietness. Nothing in it feels demonstrative, although its execution is plainly difficult. The unglazed surface, the relief carving, the three-colour slip, and the openwork piercing all require command, yet the work does not present itself as virtuosity. It presents itself as presence.

This is why the set remains memorable. It does not rely on gloss to produce elegance, nor on volume to produce grandeur. Instead, it allows clay, incision, and controlled floral abundance to speak together. The result is not a Buncheong work in the narrow sense, but a thoughtful extension of a Buncheong-associated material language into something more experimental, dry, and quietly monumental.

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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