This globular jar, often referred to as a "moon jar" because its shape suggests a full or shaded half moon, is a fine eighteenth-century example. Although it features a less than perfectly round shape and somewhat uneven glaze surface, it is incredibly beautiful and its irregularities were very much appreciated in accordance with Korean aesthetics. Only produced for some one hundred years, moon jars did not appear until the late seventeenth century and had already begun to disappear by the early nineteenth century.
Because the white clay could not sustain the height and weight necessary to support the jar's body, they were produced in two sections and attached together at the waist, often leaving a seam. Korean ceramicists worked in harmony with the irregularity of the potter's wheel to produce shapes that accentuated naturalism. During the Joseon dynasty, a strong Confucian aesthetic prevailed that valued the elegant simplicity of undecorated white wares. Always seeing something new in the simple forms and undecorated white color, many scholars wrote and reflected on the "living" quality of such ceramic wares.
Hyonjeong Kim, Associate Curator, Chinese and Korean Art, (2008)
