Jar with Horn-Shaped Handles (100s CE): Art, History and Details

Jar with Horn-Shaped Handles (100s CE) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

Although the function of this earthenware vessel remains unknown, its low-fired red surface indicates the various steps in its fabrication. First, coils of clay were layered on top of one another and pinched together to form the wall of the pot. Then wood mallets with carved surfaces pounded these walls simultaneously, inside and out, merging and thinning the clay bands. Thus the impressed designs visible on both the inner and outer surfaces were functional as well as decorative. A single incised line courses across the body wall of impressed patterns, linking the two "horns." Each of these is pierced to allow a uniform firing of the entire vessel. The function of the "horn" handles remains unknown. The smooth, finished surfaces of the short neck and thick, rounded mouth of the vessel indicate the use of a potter's wheel to complete the form. This rare vessel probably comes from the southwestern region of the Korean peninsula.

Object facts

• Title: Jar with Horn-Shaped Handles
• Date: 100s CE
• Culture: Korea, Three Kingdoms period (57 BCE–668 CE)
• Type: Ceramic
• Technique: earthenware with impressed surface designs
• Dimensions: Overall: 25.9 cm (10 3/16 in.)
• Collection: Korean Art
• Department: Korean Art
• Accession number: 1997.186

A detail from the museum

Closed kilns built on hillsides became widely used for producing this type of pottery vessel in Korea during the Three Kingdoms period.

Collection credit

John L. Severance Fund

Further reading listed by the museum

• Pottery from Ancient Korea: Clay Art for Life and Death [한국고대의토기 : 흙・예술・삶과 죽음]. Seoul: National Museum of Korea, 1997.
• Cleveland Museum of Art, “Major European Porcelain Crucifix, Pre-Columbian Figure, and Other Works Added to CMA Collection,” December 3, 1997, Cleveland Museum of Art Archives.
• Kim, Yunjeong and 8 others. Hangung doja sajeon [한국 도자 사전]. Seoul: Gyeongin munhwasa, 2015.

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.