White Porcelain Jar with Paulownia and Crane Design in Underglaze Cobalt Blue

Joseon Period (18th Century)

This jar of the late Joseon period presents a wide, straight-sided mouth rim and a body that swells generously from the shoulder before tapering to the base. The decoration is executed in underglaze blue (cheonghua): two bands of ground pattern (jimun) encircle the lower body, above which a fully blossoming paulownia tree with flowers and leaves is depicted, while cranes linger gracefully below — the whole composition rendered with the assured, practiced brushwork of a skilled hand. The glaze is a white porcelain glaze with a faint suffusion of pale blue, limpid and transparent in quality. During the latter half of the eighteenth century, as society flourished and demand grew for underglaze blue white porcelain bearing painterly, pictorial decoration, the Bunwon-ri kiln in Gwangju produced a considerable body of works in response — jars of fluent, accomplished brushwork of which this piece stands as a particularly fine example.