Dobrovits Aladár szerk.: Az Iparművészeti Múzeum Évkönyvei 5. (Budapest, 1962)

HOPP FERENC MÚZEUM - MUSÉE FERENC HOPP - Ferenczy, László: The Collection of Corean Industrial Art. A Gift of the Corean People's Democratic Republic

Preservation and reviving of great ancient national traditions play a part of primary importance in modern ceramical industry too. Production demanded therefore hitherto principally the reemployment of aged masters, the reconstruction of old techniques fallen already in oblivion and their employment in the producing process. The items of our ceramic collection, with the exception of an old vase, follow the patterns of the Koryo-period both in shape and decoration. However, a movement has been launched to promote the development of ceramic art and increase the varieties of ceramic wares. The pieces of the ceramic collection present also well known specimens of Koryo-age types, e. g. a bamboospray-shaped tea-pot, a gourd-shaped ewer widened upwards etc. Once characteristic Corean decorative procedures are also well to be seen on them. Several pieces are decorated in sangJcam technique consisting of engraved ornaments of lines, dots, flowers, filled in with kaolin or black clay and then glazed. Decorated celadons began to be known in Corea between 1140—1170. This kind of decoration was a specific Corean technical procedure, unknown anywhere else. A prominent piece of this group is the vase of elegant form with willows, cranes and other waterfowls (Fig. 1.). Different from this kind in motives and colours are the "Mishima- de" celadons, also represented in our collection. They were named thus as their decoration, consisting of festoons, dots and lines reminded one of a certain type of Japanese script. The patterns were engraved in the greyish or yellowish ground and filled with white kaolin. The "Mishima-de" celadon, having been fashionable in Corea from the thirteenth to the seventeenth century, was not so delicate in form and decoration as the other kinds of celadons. Celadons were often decorated with high and low reliefs too. A good example of this kind is a vase in the collection, with a dragon standing out in relief from the wall of the vessel, represented in flight among clouds in such an original way that the handles of the vase are formed by the body of the dragon, emerging at two places from the vessel. Old porcelain is represented by a blue and white vase of the I-period (nineteenth century). It is decorated with a dragon and clouds, painted in blue under the glaze (Fig. 2.). Transition to mass production of porcelains began in Corea in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Porcelains of the I-period are well known throughout the world. Their white colour is a little bluish and not very lustre. The most delicate ones were made in the first half of the I-period when the central power was strong and culture was flourishing. In the beginning inlaid ornaments or high relief-decorations were preferred. The Japanese resettled many Corean masters to Japan in order to introduce the fabrication of porcelain and to develop ceramical industry there. This event was naturally extremely detrimental to Corean pottery. However, it was followed by a great development in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. After the sixteenth century there was no progress in the technical development of the porcelain industry but the underglaze blue became prominent. During the reign of king Sejo in the second half of the fifteenth century the cobalt was imported from China at a price many times higher than gold. But in course of investigations suggested by the government more Corean mines were discovered and since the eighteenth century blue pigments were gathered mostly from Corean finding places. The greatest difference against the late Ming fabrications is the deeper and thicker blue of the Chinese ones