The Korean Moon Jar: Why a Lopsided White Jar Became a Masterpiece
It is a white jar, a little lopsided, with no painted decoration at all. It may be the most admired object in Korean art. The moon jar, dalhangari (달항아리), has hung in paintings, sold at auction for millions and been copied by potters around the world. Most of its charm comes from the things a perfectionist would call flaws. Two halves of one moon Moon jars are Joseon white porcelain, made mostly from the later 17th century through the 18th. Their size was the problem: a jar that large is hard to throw in one piece on a potter's wheel. So potters shaped the upper and lower halves as two separate bowls and joined them at the rim. The seam usually shows as a faint band around the middle, and the two halves rarely line up perfectly. In the kiln the jar slumps a little, the glaze pools and crazes, and the white comes out warm or milky or faintly blue. The result is never a perfect sphere. That is the point. A moon jar looks less manufactured than grown, which may be why it feel...