Bowl

Porcelain production at the beginning of the Joseon dynasty addressed a shortage of precious metals and bronze, long used in the production of domestic wares by different classes of Korean society. A royal decree from the first decades of the Joseon period ruled: “Instead of metalwork, every person in the nation must use ceramics or lacquerware.” Originally plain white porcelain dishes—such as this as this bowl displaying a characteristic high foot and rim that turns outward—was a highly restricted luxury item for royalty and court. By the sixteenth century, when this example was probably produced, the demand for and consumption of porcelain became widespread among all classes of society for use in everyday life and for special ceremonial purposes, such as Neo-Confucian ancestral rites where white porcelain bowls held offerings of food for the deceased. The aesthetic restraint of early Joseon porcelain design embodied the new dynasty’s Neo-Confucian ethical and social ideals of purity and frugality.