SLIP-COATED BOTTLE / TOKKURI, Buncheong ware, Joseon Dynasty (1392–1897 CE)
Tax excluded. Import duties may apply. Shipping costs are calculated at checkout.
Each piece is carefully packed for international delivery.
A buncheong slip-coated bottle from the Joseon Dynasty.
Buncheong ware is a type of pottery produced in the early to mid Joseon dynasty, made by applying a white slip to a gray-blue clay body and then glazing the piece. The slip-coated variety involves covering the entire vessel with white slip, yielding a soft white appearance that differs from that of true white porcelain.
This small slip-coated bottle has a rounded, swelling body and a short, upright neck. The rim flares slightly outward, and while the body is generously rounded, the overall proportions are compact and fit comfortably in the hand.
The glaze surface is covered throughout with fine crazing; from beneath the white slip pale gray‑blue seepage and iron‑toned variations emerge. The mouse‑gray hues seen from the shoulder to the body have a rain‑streaked quality, lending a quiet depth to the slip’s white.
Traces of the clay remain around the foot, and the effects of firing and the clay’s color are visible even on the interior. The highlights of this tokkuri are its form—neat without being overly refined—and the surface texture that has developed over a long period.
Capacity when filled to the brim is approximately 300cc. As a sake vessel it holds about one and a half go, a size well suited to practical use. Although modest in scale, the body has a satisfying sense of mass; at ROCANIIRU it is regarded as a "palm-sized tokkuri," an object whose appeal is complete in the hand. Even with a single flower, the white surface and the subtle spread of glaze will gracefully receive and complement the bloom.
There is glaze loss at the rim; the body shows crazing, abrasion, iron spots, and grey-blue staining. Aside from minor surface scratches and soiling consistent with its age, the overall condition is good.
Numerous product photos are available for you to examine the details and condition. Should you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us.
Its aesthetic placed emphasis not on surface splendor or technical virtuosity, but on forms and modes of being that quietly support a person’s inner life. Vessels and furniture were not simply tools for use; they may also have served as a kind of “place of self-cultivation,” ordering one’s daily conduct and state of mind. A plain jar in a scholar’s study, a simple desk, an undecorated brush rest—these were objects before the eye, but also mirrors of one’s posture and thought.
It is no accident that crafts from the Joseon period possess a presence that “does not say too much.” They were made to accompany the inner life—not to overwhelm the viewer, but to breathe alongside us and quietly restore a sense of order.
In white porcelain, for example, such “unintended phenomena” as the slight flow of glaze, variations in the clay body, or slight irregularities of form were accepted as they were. They embody a spirit of broad acceptance, unlike the modern aesthetic that treats perfection and uniformity as the highest values. This view reconsiders the boundaries between nature and human making, beauty and imperfection, object and mind; it is not an exaggeration to say that it existed beyond the frame of craft as the spirit of an age.
If we were to name it, the beauty of Joseon is not a “beauty of display” but a “beauty of resonance.” Its beauty lies not solely in the attraction of the object itself, but in the opportunity it gives us to reconsider how a person ought to be through the object. For this reason, an object must not speak too much; it must contain intervals, open space, and silence. I cannot help feeling that such thought runs beneath the making of these objects.
These values eventually crossed the sea and took deep root in Japan. In the world of chanoyu in particular, Joseon white porcelain and buncheong ware were already being used by the Momoyama period. Their simple, quiet character—different from the solemn grandeur of Chinese karamono—came to be embraced. The tea aesthetic of “clearing the mind before what does not speak” resonated deeply with the silence and imperfection held in Joseon vessels, nurturing a gaze that found in them the spirit of wabi-sabi.
With the arrival of the modern era, thinkers of the Mingei movement such as Yanagi Sōetsu and Kawai Kanjirō found in Joseon vessels “the power to purify a person” and “a form of life as it ought to be.” At a time when craft was being forgotten, these objects were welcomed not merely as old vessels but, with profound sympathy and respect, as presences reflecting a way of living itself.
When I, living in the present day, encounter the crafts of Joseon, I am moved once again by their stillness. They contain the thought of an age that asked how a person should live and how one should be. That thought has not faded; it continues to resonate clearly even now.
Choose options
Tax excluded. Import duties may apply. Shipping costs are calculated at checkout.
Change language
