Dish with Incised Floral Design (1100s): Art, History and Details

Dish with Incised Floral Design (1100s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Celadon wares used for everyday such as this dish were among the most common burial objects in tombs during the Goryeo period (918–1392). Furnishing tombs with an elaborate assemblage of objects was believed to honor and comfort the newly dead. Generally, Goryeo tombs were left untouched until the late 1800s. During the colonial period (1910–45), however, Japanese archaeologists competitively excavated the tombs located in Kaeseong, the former capital of the Goryeo period, and these wares soon became available for Japanese and Western collectors.

Object facts

• Title: Dish with Incised Floral Design
• Date: 1100s
• Culture: Korea, Goryeo dynasty (918–1392)
• Type: Ceramic
• Technique: glazed porcelain
• Dimensions: Overall: 5.1 cm (2 in.)
• Collection: Korean Art
• Department: Korean Art
• Accession number: 1924.138

A detail from the museum

The translucent greenish and bluish glaze of Goryeo celadons, shown in this vase, is the result of distinctive small and long Korean kilns, which maintained a low oxygen saturation with a high level of carbon dioxide.

Collection credit

Educational Purchase Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Goryeo Dynasty: Korea's Age of Enlightenment, 918-1392. San Francisco: Asian Art Museum, 2003.
• Jang, Nam-won. "The Tea and Celadons during the Goryeo Dynasty : Considering the Celadon Tea Utensils [고려시대 茶文化와 靑瓷]." Misulsa nondan (2007): 129–162.
• Goryeo: The Glory of Korea [대고려, 그 찬란한 도전]. Seoul: National Museum of Korea, 2018.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.