Lidded Vessel with Loop Handles (lid) (300–1 BCE): Art, History and Details

Lidded Vessel with Loop Handles (lid) (300–1 BCE) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

This small storage jar was hand built from coils of clay before it was finished on a potter's wheel. The thick, vertical ridges covering the surface were impressed into the wet clay using a carved wooden paddle. This network of raised lines was then intersected by four incised lines coursing around the bulbous form and separating the body into lower and upper areas with deft visual simplicity. Such direct, effective design solutions to ceramic decoration appear frequently in early Korean ceramics. The two perforations in the upper body were no doubt used to help secure the lid to the body with a cord.

Object facts

• Title: Lidded Vessel with Loop Handles (lid)
• Date: 300–1 BCE
• Culture: Korea, Iron Age (c. 300–57 BCE)
• Type: Ceramic
• Technique: earthenware, with impressed, paddled, and incised decoration and red slip
• Collection: Korean Art
• Department: Korean Art
• Accession number: 1999.228.b

A detail from the museum

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

Collection credit

Gift of the Kang Collection of Korean Art in memory of Robert P. Bergman

Further reading listed by the museum

• Ch'a, Mi-rae, Kwi-suk An, Cleveland Museum of Art, and 국외소재문화재재단. The Korean Collection of the Cleveland Museum of Art. Edited by An Min-hŭi. First edition, English ed. Overseas Korean Cultural Heritage Series, 16. Seoul, Republic of Korea: Overseas Korean Cultural Heritage Foundation, 2021.

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.