Plate I (See page 13)
Willow wine bottle showing very late Koryo glaze and shape. Probably circ 1400, From a grave in
Yangp'yong, Kyonggi-do. Collection of the author.
Plate,Ⅱ (See page 13)
Wine Bottle. Punch'ong ware; decorated with white slip applied with a broad brush and painted in
underglaze iron. From a kiln located at Keryong-san, Ch’ungch’ong Namdo.
15 th- 16 th century
Now Toksu Palace Museum, Seoul
Picture taken from: Masterpieces of Korean Art; page 137
Plate,Ⅲ (See page 17)
Kilnsites of the Yi dynasty as listed by Asakawa
Plate IV (See page 20)
Sculptured ‘mishima’ pilgrim bottle. After the Mongol invasion, pottery became thicker and stronger so it
could be carried about on horseback, for horses became far more widely used under Mongol influence. A
flask like this was used to carry water or wine for the rider. Most such pieces come from Cheju-do or
South Cholla and were made mostly in South Cholla. The designs, as here, have notable in¬formality,
originality and verve. Probably circ 1500. From a Japanese private collection, (Photograph from Sekai
Toji Zenshu) (“Catalogue of World Ceramics”). Plate 26.
Plate V (See page 20)
Flask for warm wine of the rare type of ‘mi- shima’ (punching) which is both inlaid and sculp--tured.
Large flower design decorates the top. About 1400 A.D. Perhaps made in Hamp`yong area, South Cholla.
Author's collection.
Plate VI (See page 21)
Covered bowl of rope ‘mishima’(punch`ong) design with inscription 星州長興庫 inlaid around the lid.
There are few, if any, other inscribed pieces known in which both bowl and cover survive. Quality is also
unusually high. 15th Century. Author's collection.
Plate VII (See page 21)
Cover of preceding piece showing inscription.
[page 5]
POTTERY PRODUCTION IN THE EARLIEST YEARS OF THE YI PERIOD
By Gregory Henderson American Embassy
I. Introduction
There are many ironies in the study of Korea and, in almost every facet of Korean history, a
liberal dose of the unknown. The ceramic arts of the Yi period are no exception; their history is replete in
both qualities.
If the men of the Yi period admired pottery, they did not very often say so. It was not a subject
on which their attention centered. Probably somewhat less than was the case for China and Japan, pottery
was not—or was usually not—part of the prestige culture of their dynasty. It was, nevertheless, a very
important part of their material culture; records show1) that, of the 2,800 technicians performing 128
different specialized tasks for the court and government of the first century of Yi rule, the potters were, by
a wide margin, the largest single group, 380 making finer, 104 rougher wares a total of over 17% of the
total of technicians officially employed by the government in early Yi times. We do, of course, find some
references to pottery and to its production in government and other records. Yet, considering that pottery
was then, far more than today, the essential and universally used means of serving and storing food and
wine throughout the dynasty; considering that it was in daily use by all the figures of that long age: king,
courtier, warrior and householder; and, considering that it had been long esteemed and connected with the
court in China; considering the major part it plays in what now remains to us of five hundred and eighteen
years of Yi rule, it is remarkable that the men of Yi chose to pass over it in such predominant silence.
1) Kang Man-gil Choson Chon’gi Kongjang-go 朝鮮前期工匠考 Investigation of Artisans in the Early
Yi Period). Sahak Yon’gu. No. 12, Sept 1961, p.p. 1-73 .
[page 6]
This sparse regard for what seems to us a chief treasure is the first irony and it runs deep. The
dynasty held many things important and talked verbosely about them: its relations with China and their
quality; its morality and ethics; its Confucianism; the purity of family breeding and the claims of families
on the court; ritual, good manners and how long a queen should be mourned; the details of a king’s daily
occupations; knowledge of Chinese and Chinese (or Chinese-style) poetry. All such things and others
occupied the leading figures of the Yi age endlessly and few men can in a lifetime read all they said about
them. Yet it is, in general, precisely their absorptions which to have died or even been discredited by time
and taste both among their descendants and among those who, from other lands and newer times, peek in
at their vanished world. Of all. but the last century of the dynasty, there remains little but a vast corpus of
history and legislation, which less than one percent of modern Koreans can read; a fair corpus of literature
and of painting, esteemed by those who counted but, in the latter case, at least, suffering somewhat from
comparison with productions in lands neighboring Korea; a few buildings (only a handful dating from
before 1600); and a rather large quantity of pottery of low-born social origin which the dynasty turned out
with what it seems to have regarded as its left hand. And not a great deal else. Of all these remainders, the
one which is probably most easily and immediately understandable and accessible to the admiration of
foreigners is precisely this last, which was least esteemed in its time. Through much of the dynasty, Yi
pottery, even when technically less perfect than Chinese ceramics, compares well with pottery
contemporary to it made in any other part of the world. It is also an important criterion of a culture, and
one easily translatable across national borders. Pottery is made in a language we can understand, the [page
7] language of daily use and of an earth almost all men know. The vocabulary of this language is broad
and is shared by almost all peoples. Its cadence may be foreign but the words are clear.
This paper briefly explores this sample of the Yi age which time, fate and the burial customs of
the early years of the dynasty have preserved for us. It was a long age; too long, perhaps. It made pottery
constantly and, though more in the south than in the north, almost all over the peninsula. The great
student of Yi kiln sites, Asakawa, Hakkyo, the only man of any nation known to have visited virtually all
known kiln locations (he discovered many himself), gives us the names of some 680 Yi dynasty kiln
sites.2) The total production of such sites for over half a millenium was enormous; even today, the pottery
remaining must be counted in at least tens of thousands of pieces, very likely in hundreds of thousands.
Regional differentiations were fairly strong. The Yi period developed many styles and several changes of
taste, just as any Western nation would have in the same long period. Clearly the subject of Yi dynasty
pottery is enormous. This paper will deal only with the threshold wares of the Yi period (circa 1392-1492)
and the conditions of their manufacture.
II. The Yi Ceramic Inheritance
a. The Koryo Tradition
The Yi dynasty started in 1392 with certain definite conditions in the field of pottery. Some of
these were fundamental to Korean pottery and some peculiar to the situation then pertaining in the
ceramic field.
The Yi inherited, virtually intact, a nation which had known over 450 years of fairly continuous
rule under the Koryo kings. During this period, Korea had
2) Asakawa, Hakkyo, “Chosen no Yoseki to Saishuhin no Kiroku”, (“Record of Korean Kiln Sites and Things
Gathered There”), Sekai Toji Zenshu. (‘‘Catalogue of World Ceramics”), Vol. 14 (Yi Dynasty) pp 231-238; and
Richo Toji Yoseki Ichiranhyo (“Table of Yi Dynasty Kiln Sites”), ibid pp 239-255.
[page 8]
stood near the forefront of world nations which from the 10th-12th centuries enjoyed high cultures.
Perhaps in no field, however, was this cultural supremacy more renowned than in the field of ceramics.
Though in form somewhat inferior to Chinese Sung ceramics, which were their great inspiration, Korea’s
celadons surpassed, in clarity of glaze, anything which the rest of the world could produce at that time.
Even though long past its peak before the end of the dynasty, Korea’s ceramic tradition was a tremendous
inheritance still, one which the new king and his court neither could nor, so far as we know, wished to
ignore. The capital was changed, there was a gradual and important shift from Buddhism to
Confucianism, there were certain changes in land ownership and among the controlling families. Yet it
took time before the changes of the Yi regime left their mark on pottery so that we can clearly
differentiate early Yi ware from its late Koryo predecessors. There is a relatively large corpus of pottery
which must be assigned to the last half century or so of Koryo or the first decades of Yi without our being
able to discern therein any dynastic line. Though a taste for rather plain white ware began within the first
century of Yi rule and the tendency to decorate it with blue designs was an innovation when it came, in
general the dynasty’s ceramic changes were gradual rather than revolutionary so that certain wares,
particularly mishima tea bowls, were still being made in styles directly successive to Koryo as late as the
middle or even later 17th century.
b. The Social Place of the Korean Potter
At least one other condition remained, apparently, without much change; perhaps unfortunately
so. Pottery continued, throughout the dynasty, and to some extent continues even today, to be the work of
the lower social classes, work which neighbored closely on the socially despised.3) Even in the case of
painting which could be practiced by gentlemen, the Korean scholar3) A descendant of Kwangju potters has qualified this in a recent meeting with the author. He claims that the
Kwangju potters were well-paid and most respectfully treated up to the begining of the 17th Century, but that the
kilns were increasingly little supported by the government during that century, eventually resulting in their
abandonment. Potters of local, non-government kilns had low social status.
[page 9]
painter Kang Hui-an (1419-1465), when his skill was praised, replied “Painting is lowly expertise; if a
painting of mine remains for later times it will only bring stigma on my name.” Apparently potters were
frequently slaves, or, when not, were nameless lower-class artisans.4) Evidently this had been the Koryo
system, though clearly some of the designs which lowly potters executed must originally have been drawn
as models by a refined and educated hand Late Koryo times after the Mongol ravages and particularly
after the frequent piratical raids by the Japanese on the great coastal kilns of Cholla-do must have still
further impoverished and reduced the social status of the potters, a fact which the decline in the quality of
the late ware recalls. The Yi ruling group, gradually adopting an ever more rigid form of Confucianism
which emphasized social differences, continued to freeze potters and, indeed, other technicians, into a
lowly status which finally contributed greatly to the ruin of the ancient and renowned Korean ceramic
industry. During the 1880’s, the potters at the official kilns at Kwangju, upstream from Seoul, and
elsewhere abandoned their kilns and moved to occupations where their status and rewards could improve.
It is a shame that this condition remains, in essence, the same today. By and large, the kilns are still
abandoned. Kimchi and chamber pots are turned out all over the country in a repetetive manner: there is a
little industrial pottery, but creative pottery as an artistic production is almost dead in Korea today.5) The
problem which the Yi rulers inherited a century before Columbus discovered America,
4) A very few pieces of Koryo and early Yi pottery survive with inscriptions apparently giving the name of the
maker. One is the famous Ito vase now in the Ehwa University Museum, one is in the Nedzu Museum, one is
owned by the Seoul collector, Kim Hyong-min, and one early Yi bowl is in the author’s collection. They are too
rare to form much exception to the rule.
5) During the last six years, there have been a few brave attempts to revive the making of Korean artistic pottery.
The first by a group of interested Korean cultural leaders headed by Dr Kim Che-won, Director of the Korean
National Museum, and another by Mr. Kim Hyo-chung have been unable to continue regularly. The potter Chong
Kyu continues to make artistic ware and a kiln at Ehwa University is now producing adaptations of Koryo ware.
[page 10]
a problem which the dynasty appears neither to have recognized nor solved, is inherited today by their
descendants; solution is not yet in sight. At the time of the Yi inheritance, however, Korea’s ceramic
tradition still had several centuries of creativity to run.
c. Government Hegemony over Ceramics
One further general condition was inherited likewise and continued Korea’s kilns, like other
forms of production, were not regarded primarily as forms of individual entrepreneurship in what is today
describe as ‘the private sector’; they were regarded as more or less government-connected.6) The degree
of this government control varied greatly. Yet the theory was that productive enterprises operated with
‘the grace and favor’ of the central government. An Office of Arts was established and, connected with it,
official kilns. Official kilns were the best kilns, by definition; they were best because they were set up by
the central or local government under the guidance of the government’s elaborate administrative
hierarchy to operate for the government and represent the highest standard of the nation. The most
prominent example during the Yi period were the many official kilns in Kwangju County twenty miles
upstream from Seoul. Poorer kilns were controlled little or not at all but were generally condemned to
poverty; their wares, however, are in some cases, greatly admired today, the so-called Ido (井戶) tea
bowls being, probably, examples of private produc¬tion. Operationally, there were many important
differences between the Koryo and the Yi in this regard, government control being less dominant than in
Koryo’s great days, but, by and large, I believe it can be said that the assumption of government
hegemony was the same; the assumption is far from dead today.
6) The Koryo kilns at Kangjin and Puan were probably directly government-controlled even before direct
government supervision was established over kilns in China or elsewhere. Such supervision also continued for
longer than was the case with any Sung kilns.
[page11]
III. Pottery Conditions at Opening of Yi Period
a. Introduction
Such were some of the more fundamental conditions which the Yi inherited with the Koryo
ceramic tradition. The specific situation which the Yi found in 1392 is, of course, far less clear; it has, so
far as I know, been amply described in no source materials and must therefore be surmised from an
examination of the surviving wares. Research on these wares for the purpose of showing us the
background of the kilns and their methods and administration has hardly begun. Yet several observations
can be made.
b. Mass Production and Its Quality
The quality of Koryo ceramic production was, as we have noted, much past its prime at the end
of the dynasty, The most obvious sign of this decline is seen in the glazes. Once limpid and halcyon, they
had, through the last century and a half of the dynasty, turned gradually grey, green-grey and finally
brown. During the last decades of Koryo, a first-class celadon glaze could, apparently, not be made, or,
more accurately, could not be fired with proper control and timing. Likewise the potting, never as
sensitive as the finest Sung potting, became increasingly heavy, crude and faulty. The designs lost in
fineness and, in the final decades, in complexity. Finally, over the entire last century and a half of the
ware, there was an increasing tendency toward mass-production methods imparting a somewhat
mechanical (even when hand-produced) result. The use of a stamp or mold had long been known and
practised in both China and Korea, but now the stamping of rather uniform pottery designs became
standard.
Such stamping and mass-production has its own important background in the development of
Korean material culture. It flourished in a period which also [page 12] saw the rise of other such
techniques with possibilities of reaching wider masses of people—the invention of movable type printing
in late Koryo times, the invention of han’gul in early Yi times, the introduction and spread of new
economic activities such as the growing and spinning of cotton and the rise and proliferation of the small
artisan factory. Pottery is one of the most pervasive sources of evidence we have for the economic
character of Korean society from circa 1300 until 1592 AD, and what it shows us expands our knowledge
of early Yi society and is at variance with the picture of complete decline and corruption which the early
Yi historians imputed to late Koryo times. It shows us genuine and not entirely discouraging social and
economic change, Gone is the production of elegant pottery for a court aristocracy. In its place is the
production of an even larger quantity of pottery whose standard is lower but whose use is more
widespread. The gap between the pottery of the court and that used, not by everyone, but certainly rather
widely by the people appears to have narrowed appreciably compared with what we know from tombs of
1100—1300. The late Koryo and early Yi pieces bearing the names of government offices are of a quality
very difficult to distinguish from that which appears from quite ordinary graves and are even often
inferior to many unmarked pieces whose destination appeared to be, judging from the graves, private as
well as official. Yi social tendencies gradually combatted this trend toward what the French might call
“vulgarization”—perhaps, indeed, Yi Confucian social theory may have been adopted partly to return
Korean society to a path of strict hierarchical differences from which it had been in danger of
wandering—yet, someday we might, through evidence like this, go beyond the point of saying that the
invention of han’gul in the years immediately preceding 1446 was merely the gift of a great monarch to
his people and conclude that it was also, and in part, the result of certain equalizing trends in the society
of the time and of the pressures they brought. For such trends, the [page 13] striking rise of artisans
and local factories described by Mr. Kang7) may offer important evidence.
c. Changes in Design and Taste
One other characteristc, almost opposite in trend to the industrial stamping of pottery, tells us
something about ceramic development in the 14th century. It was a sharp change in taste and in design.
We can see some illustration of this change in Plate I. The line is thicker, the inlay less delicate, the
concept less minute and fussy, the execution at once less perfect, more spontaneous and unrestrained. The
man who drew the willow on this vase failed to see all the details noted in earlier Koryo willow tree
drawing. But he saw the wind in his tree and he kept the wind in. So it is not only with plant life but
animals. Great fishes appear, drawn partly with playful humor, partly with a sense of naive terror of the
denizens of the unknown deep which reminds us of fish and monster paintings of the European Middle
Ages. (Plate II) Some would call it only degeneration of design and technique. But it is something more.
It is clearly a difference in condition. At Koryo’s height, the chief kilns were under close government
supervision, responsive to the taste of a China-oriented court aristocracy. The identity of many Koryo
designs and shapes with those of China probably show that design at the kilns was copied from drawings
produced at court, some of them copied or adapted from China. The process was well-controlled and
highly skillful; eight centuries later, it cannot be so skillfully produced today. Yet it lacked a certain
freedom and spontaneity perhaps partly because the local potters are presumed not to have originated the
concepts or designs they executed. The 14th century was sharply different Mongol invasion, Japanese
piratical depredation, foreign domination and increasing confusion and decay had apparently loosened,
perhaps almost to the breaking point, the government control of the kilns. Designs
7) See footnote 1 above.
[page14]
probably no longer came down from above. Left more largely to themselves, the potters of the provinces,
far away from the capital, worked out their own designs and modified the shapes known to them. What
had been a court art became a folk art, closer to the men who work with the soil to make pots. There was
loss of skill but there was gain in life, in warmth. Chinese influence receded, though Tzu-chou and Yuan
wares still exerted some, and a relaxed, spontaneous, sometimes naive Korean spirit came to the fore.
Through the skill-less glazes and in the gauche shapes, beauty remains, with something pathetic, wild and
lonely about it which bespeaks the uncertain age in which the makers lived.
d. The Dispersion of the Kilns
Behind this new esthetic stands the dispersal of the kilns. Of course, there were always local
kilns making local ware; of necessity, since a poor farming land cannot afford to move breakable vessels
for daily use over long distances. In palmier Koryo days, however, when there had been greater differences between court and ordinary pottery, the great clusters of official kilns at Kangjin and Puan in
Cholla-do, had monopolized the making of the highest quality court wares. The withering of central
power brought greater local independence and control. The monopoly vanished. New kilns sprang up in
many areas or, if not wholly new, participated in the diffusion of culture locally which seems to
charac¬terize late Koryo times. Cholla-do, old site of the official kilns, led the way, but Kyongsang-do
and Ch’ungch’ong-do, especially around the famous mountain near Taejon, Kyeryongsan, soon followed
and the northward march of later pottery-making proceeded until every province had well-known pottery
and even Hamgyong Pukto became famous for local wares. These kilns, largely without court orders or
patterns, worked out their own traditions by themselves. They continued until deep into Yi times the
traditions of freer, more spontaneous taste to which the conditions of late Koryo life had given birth and
they added to them a far greater variety of local [page 15] wares than Koryo had ever known. Variety and
spontaneity of spirit became, from these beginnings, the noteworthy characteristics of Yi pottery as a
whole.
IV. Yi Dynasty Kiln Sites
a. List During Sejong’s Reign
Something should be said about the sites of the Yi kilns and what kind of ware they produced. A
few listings are available. One is given in fascicles 148-150 of that portion of the Yi Dynasty Annals
devoted to the reign of the great King Sejong, the han’gul king (1419-1450), which lists the names of all
important kiln sites in Korea in that period noting whether each site made high, middle or low quality
pottery.8) The numbers of kilns said by official record to be located in each province is followed by the
locations of the provincial sites. The two do not correspond exactly, for reasons which reqire further
study, but the deviation is small except in the case of P’yongan-do and Kangwon-do. The figures are as
follows:
Number of kilns said to be in each Number of kilns whose location is actually
province
specified
Kyonggi-do
41
31
Chungchong-do 55
61
Kyongsang-do 71
72
Cholla-do
56
62
Hwanghae-do
24
29
Kangwon-do
24
12
P’yongan-do
47
23
Hamgyong-do 21
20
339
311
P’yongan-do and Kangwon-do were not important loci of pottery manufacture and it looks as if
the officials had either overstated the number of kilns in an effort to bring their provinces nearer the
national
8) Reproduced from Sekai Toji Zenshu (STZ) op. cit., ed. Koyama, Fujio, Kawade Shobo, Vol 14, 1956, p.p. 225230
[page 16]
average or a number of kilns in these two provinces were so insignificant that their locations were
unknown or were not thought worth recording. The list was done by men of the most stringent quality
standards. Of all the sites listed or specified, only three—less than 1%—were credited with producing
high-class ware: Sangju and Koryong in western Kyongsang Pukto and Kwangju, 20 miles up the Han
River from Seoul. Confirmation by shards of this quality rating cannot be fully established, though all
three areas have, at various times, been noted for pottery production and Kwangju particularly produced,
as a government kiln site, high quality ware through most of the dynasty. Approximately 27% of the
kilns, according to the above, were in the four large northern provinces and 73% in the smaller southern
provinces; roughly, we can say that the southern third of the Korean peninsula in Sejong’s time had two
thirds of the kiln sites. While this list is an obvious springboard for research, work on it has never been
completed. The Japanese expert Asakawa Hakkyo notes9) that the place names given have changed many
times since Sejong’s day and do not always correspond completely with places given the same names
today. He also noted many difficulties in squaring this list with his own investigations of the shards he
found at Yi dynasty kiln sites. The general situation Asakawa portrays, however, corresponds with the
Sejong list and can be confirmed.
b. Asakawa’s list
Asakawa’s own larger record of the Yi dynasty kiln sites is a valuable part of the great Japanese
set Sekai Toji Zenshu (Vol 14, pp 231-255). Drawing on the entire five hundred years of the dynasty
whereas the former list drew only on its first half century, Asakawa found 678 Yi kiln sites in the Korean
peninsula scattered as follows through the provinces, five of which had, by Asakawa’s time, been divided
into north and south:
9) above footnote
[page17]
Kiln Sites in Each Province as Visited and Identified
Kyongsang Namdo
Kyongsang Pukto
Cholla Namdo
Cholla Pukto
Ch’ungch’ong Namdo
Ch’ungch’ong Pukto
Kyonggi-do
Hwanghae-do
Kangwon-do
P’yongan Namdo
P’yongan Pukto
Hamgyong Namdo
Hamgyong Pukto
Total
by Asakawa
50
57
95
44
93
15
167
38
28
19
22
15
35
678
To this list is appended Asakawa’s record of the type of shard found at each site and his opinion
as to the period (Early, Middle, Later or End) during the Yi dynasty when the kiln operated. The large
number for Kyonggi-do reflects chiefly the 67 sites of the chief official kilns of the Yi period at Kyonggido Kwangju. No pottery seems to have been made within the walls of Seoul; the humble art of the potter
was not allowed to demean the prestigious precincts of the Yi capital. In this list the same northern area
(here six provinces), which in the Sejong list had 27%, here have just over 23%, thus confirming the great
dominance of the southern provinces in pottery making. It is interesting that, in Asakawa’s listing, the
four west-coast provinces of southern Korea, the two Chollas, South Ch’ungch’ong and Kyonggi, contain
nearly 60% of all sites. The situation is fairly well shown in the illustrated map of Yi dynasty kiln sites
taken from Asakawa’s article.(Plate III)
c. Records Concerning Government Potters
Note might also be made of a third brief compilation prepared in Number 12 of the Korean
magazine Sahak Yongu, October 1961, by the young Korean [page 18] scholar Kang Man-gil chiefly from
materials found in the Yi Dynastic Annals (see Footnote 1). Mr Kang finds lists of the 2nd year of
Songjong (1471), near the height of the official production of mishima ware, showing that 2,759 artisans
were than engaged in turning out 128 different products (everything from saddle decorations to figured
silk) for 30 government offices. These artisans were directly employed by the central government not
only in Seoul, however, but in the local branches of the central government where pottery was made for
its use and under its direction. 386 of these artisans turned out dishes and bowls and 104 were concerned
with the manufacture of large pots. The 490 men listed as engaged in pottery manufacture consti¬tuted
the largest single specialized service in the government, 17% of all the 2,795 employed. In addition to
those hired by the central government 3,764 were technicians attached to the various provincial
governments. A far smaller percentage and number of these, only 96 (2 1/2, %) were potters, of whom 43
came from Cholla-do, 26 from Kyongsang-do, 21 from Ch’ungch’ong- do, 6 from Kyonggi-do and none
from any other province. The reasons for this great concentration in the south and in the west may lie
partly with the excellent clay resources of such areas as Hadong; but this is a rather minor factor as the
kilns at Kwangju, which imported their clay from rather distant sites in Kangwon-do, like Yanggu, show
us. Wood was, by itself, not a prime determinant; for if it were, pottery-making would have been more
concentrated in heavily-forested Hamgyong and Kangwon-do where, in fact, little pottery was made. Of
course, major pottery-making areas did, in general, have good combinations of clay, wood, lime, quartz,
feldspar, kaolin and talc needed in pottery manufacture Kiln concentration southward had, however,
additional historical and cultural reasons. It was the southwest coast which lay toward China, an
important time-worn avenue through which the great Chinese wares stimulated Korea. Here was the
ancient area of continuous and settled culture and here, until the tragic dying out of [page 19] the art
during the later Yi period, was the potter population with centuries of accumulated skills. Here also, of
course, were many of the private potters in villages with their own pottery traditions. No list for these men
survives and probably none was ever made.
While these lists give us two rather substantial charts through which to steer our course among
the sites of Yi pottery, it is clear that only the surface of research on this subject has been scratched. It is
hoped that the new Department of Archeology at Seoul National University will awaken more interest in
this study for which so many fascinating materials abound.
v. The Major Categories of Yi Pottery
Yi pottery can be divided into many types, several broad categories being of major importance.
a. Punch’ong Mishima
At the same time the broadest and the most ill-defined of the categories of Yi ware is that which
is still most widely known by a Japanese name: Mishima. The different Korean word Punch’ong covering
approximately this category is now gaining currency. The origin of the word mishima is controversial and
it has been used to cover far too broad a field but it refers chiefly to the inlaid celadon wares of the late
Koryo and early Yi period, particularly to the stamped ware. The use of stamps or molds was ancient in
China and goes back into the Silla period in Korea. For some reason, the chrysanthemum design became
particularly widespread in stamped and inlaid celadons of the last 200 years of the Koryo dynasty and the
most commonly-accepted of the many explanations for the term mishima is that it derived from the design
of chrysanthemum strings which was used on an almanac published by a Shinto shrine located in the town
of Mishima near the Isu peninsula, this design greatly resembling that on late Koryo ware. [page20] At
first used in separate sprays or strings, the design grew ever closer and more compact and minute,
achieving, apparently in the decades surrounding the beginning of Yi, a decidedly mille fleurs effect
which can be seen on many bowls. This design in turn evolved, also in very early Yi times, into the
simple cross-hatching known as the rope-curtain design which became so characteristic of the early Yi
wares that it almost evokes, the aura of an official style. These and all the many related versions of
mishima wares were all executed by the punch’ong method, a process of incising and stamping a design
in the clay, then brushing white slip across the whole pattern, allowing it to fill the depressions and then
wiping the higher parts free of the slip. A rare category, here illustrated in Plate 5, is both sculptured and
inlaid. Among the several mishima categories distinguished by Japanese scholars is one made around the
opening of the dynasty and called from indentations too high to be filled, “sculptured mishima”; here
illustrated by a rare example. (Plate IV)
b. Inscribed Mishima
One subcategory of mishima is made particularly interesting by the inscriptions
preserved on its pieces These are mishima wares, mostly bowls, several dozen of which, at least, are
known to exist, which have short inscriptions, usually of from one to five Chinese characters, inlaid into
them. Often these inscriptions describe in full or in abbreviation an office of the central government,
inscriptions being known for six such offices.10) It is probable that this practice arose in the confusion
and corruption of late Koryo times to prevent an excessive number of pieces intended for court use from
disappearing into private hands. Under the organization-minded Yi kings, it was probably continued as a
control mechanism, perhaps in an effort to raise the quality of
10) STZ, Vol. 14, pp 199-202, Koyama, Fujo, Reihin Mishima, lists the following such offices: 長 興庫
(Changhung-go); 內資寺 (Naeja-si) 禮賓寺 (Yebin-si); 仁壽府 (Insu-bu); 內膽寺 (Naech’om-si): 德寧府
(Tongnyong-bu). The last of these occurs on only one known example.
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a ware which the Yi kings and their advisors may have realized was not fully worthy of a nation of
Korea’s antecedents and its honored place in the circle of Chinese culture. For example, we find in the
Taejon Hoet’ong, one of the main codes of early Yi law, the regulation that pottery pieces sent as gifts to
the court should bear the name of the maker so that the maker and, particularly, the supervising local
official, could be made responsible. With the proliferation of kilns, it had evidently become more difficult
for the government to maintain standards, the government’s exactions of ‘gifts’ from local kilns were
probably disliked, and the potters may have displayed their aversion by producing goods of low quality.
In many cases, the inscription bears the name of a locality which produced the ware for the central office.
About fourteen such local names appear on inscriptions some of these frequently.11) Of the fourteen, the
eleven more commonly appearing are from Kyongsang-do; two rarer inscriptions are of locales in Chollado and one rare one designates Haeju in Hwang¬hae-do. Strong differences do not appear between pieces
marked as coming from one locality and those marked as coming from another. Kyongsang-do was the
locus of particularly vigorous artisan, small-scale industrial growth during this period. We know from the
Dynastic Annals that, of a total of 3,664 shops or artisan factories producing every manner of goods for
court use in the early Yi period, 1,152, or nearly one-third, were located in Kyongsang-do. It is an
unexplained irony that, despite the control aim of these inscriptions, the pieces on which they appear are
usually of rather low, sometimes very low, quality. The illustrations here shown depict the only inscribed
pieces of high mishima quality known. (Plates VI and VII). The inscribing of pieces with the names of
government offices seems to have ended about the time of Sejo (1456-68) and to have been practiced
during the preceding one hundred years.
11) In approximately descending order of frequency: Kyongju, Kyongsan, Miryang, Ch’angwon, Kimhae, Ulsan,
Songju, Yangsan, Chinju, Onyang, Samga (Hyopch’on), Yean, Kimsan and Haeju.
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Mishima ware had deep roots in Korean soil; it was productive and long-lasting. Its greatest and
most typical period was probably the first century of Yi rule from 1392-1492. Yet pieces described under
this name were made over a much longer period than this, probably from the middle of the thirteenth
century on, some say, for some four hundred years. Even after the end of the Hideyoshi invasion, in the
16th century, when the Japanese, always mishima lovers, sent experts to the Pusan area to stimulate the
production of ceramics for the tea ceremony, it is said that wares which can be called mishima—an
artificially stimulated variety- continued to be made. Inherited from late Koryo and long improvised on, it
is the great early ware of the Yi.
Mishima was an inherited taste for the Yi. Its survival and even flourishing in Yi times is another
sign that, like Buddhism, the culture of the preceding Koryo period, recognized as great, died slowly
among the Korean people. It is with the slightly later wares that we begin to enter the unique taste of the
Yi: the ware of brushed white slip known widely by its Japanese name ‘hakeme’; the extraordinary early
avant-gardism of the Kyeryongsan pottery; the chaste, austere Yi white, ceramic symbol of the taste of the
state cult of Confucianism; blue-and-white, symbol of the Yi’s adulation of Ming culture; and tea bowls,
another survival of the world of Buddhist values within the Yi age. These, with all their complex
problems, must be the subject of a further study. With mishima, we gain access to no more than the
threshold of the ceramic arts of the Yi dynasty.