White Porcelain Moon Jar
Eighteenth century
A large, plain white jar, almost spherical, with a short neck and a slightly wider mouth than foot, stands alone in its case. There is no decoration at all. The glaze is a soft milky white with a faint bluish or warm tint, and the body is not perfectly round: one side bulges a little more than the other, and the profile has a gentle sag at the waist. Koreans call jars of this shape moon jars because their fullness and colour recall a full moon rising over a hill.
The shape explains the imperfection. A jar this size could not be thrown in one piece on a wheel, so the potter made two bowls, one for the upper half and one for the lower, and joined them at the middle while the clay was still soft. In the kiln the join often shifted slightly, and the potters accepted the result. Look for the faint seam around the widest point, the tiny pinholes and specks in the glaze, and the way the surface catches the light differently as you walk around. Nothing about it is showy, and that restraint is the point.
Moon jars were made at the royal kilns near Gwangju outside Seoul in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, probably as containers for wine, oil or grain in wealthy households. Their plainness matched the Confucian ideals of the Joseon scholar class, who prized modesty over display. In the twentieth century painters such as Kim Whanki fell in love with them, and the potter Bernard Leach carried one home to England. Today the moon jar has become a symbol of Korean aesthetics and even inspired the cauldron of the twenty eighteen Winter Olympics. Stand back a few paces and let the jar simply be round and white and quiet.
Did You Know? The painter Kim Whanki filled his studio with moon jars and wrote that he learned everything he knew about beauty from them.
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