Arts of Korea celebrates historical Korean art through 100 works from the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. The MFA has one of the finest collections of Korean art outside of East Asia, with particularly superb holdings of high-quality stoneware and lacquerware of the Koryo and Yi dynasties, Bronze Age funerary objects and Buddhist paintings and sculptures. Many of the objects in this book were originally intended for everyday use and tell a story not only about the people who used or collected these boxes, mirrors, jars, tiles and trays, but also about the people who made them. Set to coincide with the MFA’s long-awaited Korean Gallery renovation, this is an affordable yet unique addition to any Asian art library, with essays that offer an ideal introduction to the history of Korean art.
Featured image, a gourd-shaped ewer with inlaid grapevine from the Goryeo Period (13th century) is reproduced from Arts of Korea, alongside the descriptive text in the left sidebar.
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"This tall wine ewer in the shape of an elongated gourd originally had a lid and might also have been accompa¬nied by a warming basin. The ewer has a particularly elegant shape, a long spout, and a beautiful handle that resembles part of a grapevine. The decoration of grapevines, leaves, and grapes, executed in a combination of inlay and reverse-inlay techniques, covers the entire surface of the vessel. The background surface was scraped away and inlaid with white slip so the leaves and vines stand out in green. Then the veins of the leaves were inlaid in black. The grapes are outlines in white slip that were filled in with black slip. In some rare examples of this design, the grapes are filled in with underglaze red.
Grapes were introduced to Asia from the West along the Silk Road, first to China during the Tang Dynasty and some time thereafter to Korea. Grapevines became a popular subject for Korean artists and craftsmen, who used them through the nineteenth century on ceramics, lacquer, and paintings. The frequent combination of grapevine motifs with frolicking children has suggested to some scholars that the subject has an origin in Clas¬sical Bacchanalian imagery, and that its significance was transformed in Korea to symbolize abundance and many offspring."
- Excerpt describing a gourd-shaped ewer with inlaid grapevine, featured at right, is reproduced from Arts of Korea.
FORMAT: Pbk, 7 x 9 in. / 176 pgs / 130 color. LIST PRICE: U.S. $22.50 LIST PRICE: CANADA $31 GBP £20.00 ISBN: 9780878467884 PUBLISHER: MFA Publications, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston AVAILABLE: 1/31/2013 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Active AVAILABILITY: In stock TERRITORY: WORLD
Published by MFA Publications, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Text by Jane Portal, Suhyung Kim.
Arts of Korea celebrates historical Korean art through 100 works from the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. The MFA has one of the finest collections of Korean art outside of East Asia, with particularly superb holdings of high-quality stoneware and lacquerware of the Koryo and Yi dynasties, Bronze Age funerary objects and Buddhist paintings and sculptures. Many of the objects in this book were originally intended for everyday use and tell a story not only about the people who used or collected these boxes, mirrors, jars, tiles and trays, but also about the people who made them. Set to coincide with the MFA’s long-awaited Korean Gallery renovation, this is an affordable yet unique addition to any Asian art library, with essays that offer an ideal introduction to the history of Korean art.
