Tea Bowl

Cheon Han Bong specializes in tea bowls and works in the Korean buncheong (“powder green”) glazed stoneware tradition. Buncheong stoneware is a ceramic form unique to Korea’s Joseon dynasty (1392–1910), yet an art form that has been especially influential in Japan and its celebrated Tea Ceremony. Cheon is a designated Intangible Cultural Property holder—an honorific bestowed by the Korean government comparable to the status of National Living Treasure in Japan. Not merely copying traditional pottery techniques, he strives to evoke the aesthetics of ancient buncheong—irregular shapes and imperfections of glaze that give this pottery an artless quality. In this tea bowl, the casual, yet expertly thrown clay body highlights both the uneven white coloration of the coarsely-brushed slip and the tactile quality of the partially exposed dark, rough clay surfaces beneath. His approach to production is intuitive: “I can actually imagine the outcome of the piece just by looking at the color of fire. At first, the fire might simply seem red but then it becomes a white flame….that’s when the magical harmony of innumerable changes happens inside the kiln.”