White Porcelain Ink Jar with Floral Design in Underglaze Cobalt Blue

Joseon Period (19th Century)

This ink pot (mukho) presents a small mouth rim set upon a low, cylindrical body. A single, simply rendered flowering plant motif is painted in underglaze blue at one point on the shoulder — spare in its placement, and all the more effective for its restraint. The glaze is a white porcelain glaze with a faint suffusion of pale blue, limpid and clean in tone. Produced at the Bunwon-ri kiln during the nineteenth century as one among the range of scholarly desk objects associated with that manufactory, this vessel was made to hold prepared ink for use in writing and painting.