Jar with Auspicious Chinese Characters

This jar originates during a period of cultural vitality in Korea’s mid-Joseon dynasty (1392–1910). Joseon white porcelain vessels with brushed iron-oxide (brown) decoration typically featured images of bamboo, tigers, or dragons. Here, instead, the painted ornamentation includes four circles around the shoulder of the jar, each containing an auspicious Chinese character, including the word fu (fortune). During the Joseon dynasty, Chinese was the language of royal court and provincial government documents, as well as the preferred language of the literary elite. The prominence of such written motifs on the body of this jar, most likely painted by a court official dispatched to inscribed special wares, suggests that this vessel belonged to a patron schooled in Chinese classical texts, either a member of the land-owning aristocracy or a scholar-official. A band of interlocking ruyi patterns on the neck of the jar provides another decorative touch. In China, such motifs symbolize the Daoist sacred mushroom of immortality. Together, text and image expressed prosperity and long life to the head and family of the household.