Multi-sided White Porcelain Bottle with Chrysanthemum Design in Underglaze Cobalt Blue

Joseon Period (19th Century)

This exceptional bottle presents a rare and inventive form: a multi-faceted, angular body; a square neck and mouth rim that rise in a confident, gently curving profile; and a square foot ring carved with ansang (eye-shaped arch) motifs. The decoration is executed in underglaze blue throughout: fully opened chrysanthemum blossoms and their stems are rendered across the entire body with bright, animated vitality; a band of thunder-pattern (뇌문) meander encircles the mouth rim; and a densely applied band of chrysanthemum-petal motifs runs along the shoulder. The glaze is a white porcelain glaze with a faint suffusion of pale blue — bright and evenly lustrous. The Bunwon-ri kiln of the nineteenth century produced an extraordinary range of bottle forms, and this piece stands among the most inventive of them — a work in which the multi-faceted aesthetic fashionable in the decorative arts of the period is applied to the bottle form with freshness and originality, yielding a vessel that commands attention through the sheer novelty of its conception.