White Porcelain Cubic Water Dropper with Fish and Grass Design in Underglaze Cobalt Blue

Joseon Period (19th Century)

This water dropper takes a square, rectilinear form, supported at four corners by L-shaped bracket feet. The upper surface is decorated in underglaze blue with a composition of fish gliding serenely among aquatic plants — rendered with a clean, deft hand — while the side panels each bear a simplified flowering plant motif set within an L-shaped rectangular frame. The glaze is a blue-white porcelain glaze with a faint suffusion of pale blue, bright and limpid in tone. During the first half of the nineteenth century, square water droppers of this type were produced in considerable numbers at the Bunwon-ri kiln in Gwangju; while landscape designs account for the great majority of surviving decorated examples, a piece bearing fish and aquatic plant motifs of this quality is exceptionally rare. The vessel was used as a water dropper for adding water to the inkstone.