Dish with Inlaid Plant Design (1300s): Art, History and Details

Dish with Inlaid Plant Design (1300s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

As early as the 600s, the practice of drinking tea and wine became an important part of elite leisure culture in Korea. A wide bowl like this example was especially suitable for drinking powdered tea shaved from a compressed tea cake, the most commonly enjoyed type during the Goryeo period. The inlaid image of bloomed white flowers on the inner wall of this tea bowl must have made the moment of drinking tea more enjoyable.

Object facts

• Title: Dish with Inlaid Plant Design
• Date: 1300s
• Culture: Korea, Goryeo dynasty (918–1392)
• Type: Ceramic
• Technique: celadon with inlaid design
• Dimensions: Overall: 6.7 cm (2 5/8 in.)
• Collection: Korean Art
• Department: Korean Art
• Accession number: 1921.671

A detail from the museum

The transparent greenish and bluish glaze of Goryeo celadons, shown in this bowl, 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

Gift of John L. Severance

Further reading listed by the museum

• Goryeo Dynasty: Korea's Age of Enlightenment, 918-1392. San Francisco: Asian Art Museum, 2003.
• Lee, Young-hee. "The Study on Techniques and their Interrelations among Craft Arts of the Goryeo Dynasty [고려시대 공예기법 연구 상호관련성을 중심으로]." Misulsa hakbo 22 (2004): 133–170.
• 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.

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.