Wine Flask with Incised and Sgraffito Peony Design (1500s): Art, History and Details

Wine Flask with Incised and Sgraffito Peony Design (1500s) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

Produced in both central and provincial kilns during during the 1400s–1500s, buncheong (literally means "powdered green"), like this wine flask commonly feature gray-green glaze due to the usage of less processed and refined clay high in iron. Many experimental techniques such as white slip, inlay, stamping, and incising, which had been explored and perfected in the Goryeo period, were also adopted for buncheong pottery. The artist for this work extensively used the incising technique to draw both floral and abstract patterns.

Object facts

• Title: Wine Flask with Incised and Sgraffito Peony Design
• Date: 1500s
• Culture: Korea, Joseon dynasty (1392–1910)
• Type: Ceramic
• Technique: stoneware with incised design (Buncheong ware)
• Dimensions: Overall: 22.6 cm (8 7/8 in.)
• Collection: Korean Art
• Department: Korean Art
• Accession number: 1921.649

A detail from the museum

The term buncheong, which refers to this type of pottery, means "powdered gray-green glazed ceramics.”

Collection credit

Gift of John L. Severance

Further reading listed by the museum

• Park, Kyung-ja and Park Hyeong-soon. “Evolution of the Buncheong Wares in the Early Joseon Period as the White Porcelain Takes over the Taxation Supply [조선 전기 공납용 백자제작에 따른 분청사기 양식변화].” Misul sahak (2010): 291–321.
• Lee, So-young, and Seung-chang Jeon. Korean Buncheong Ceramics from the Leeum Samsung Museum of Art. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2011.
• Treasures from Korea: Arts and Culture of the Joseon Dynasty, 1392-1910. Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 2014.

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.