The Color of Nirvana
Article by C. Adam Volle
Video by David Cowger
Dr. Lilias Horton was not a naïve woman. She understood why her most important patient, Queen Myeongseong of the Joseon Dynasty, should be disposed to treat her with kindness: because really, Her Royal Highness could scarcely afford to do otherwise. Female practitioners of modern medicine were almost as rare in 19th century Korea as queens themselves. Due to concerns of both tradition and security, to lose Dr. Horton’s services might mean an unthinkable return to the absurd days when male doctors took Myeongseong’s pulse by having a woman attach a cord to her wrist, the other end of which they’d pick up in the next room; the days when they examined her tongue through a slit cut into a screen. Moreover, her new royal physician could be considered a representative of the United States of America, a much larger country with which the government desired to cultivate a good relationship, and so any meeting with the doctor conceivably held political implications.
Yet Her Royal Highness’s generosity still felt far out of proportion to services rendered. On more than one occasion, the doctor later wrote, her guides even begged her not to accept the queen’s gestures of gratitude, lest she inflame the jealousy of royal officials. A sample from the inventory of treasures that found their way to her home is worth quoting here – “a fine embroidered silk screen, embroidered pillow, and bed cushions, native silks, linens, cotton materials, fans, pockets… a very unique pair of gold bracelets, which she had ordered made for a wedding present… a ring set with a beautiful pearl for my husband.” But it’s another present, one she doesn’t mention, that truly reveals the Queen’s magnanimity toward her care provider. One day, the doctor received a pitcher.
The pitcher was small and stoneware, but it was green celadon, what Koreans call cheong-ja (청자), and an antique besides, over five hundred years old – crafted in an era of Korean history as renowned for its ceramics as the European Renaissance is for painting. Its value thus derived as much from its artistry as its age; on the very day of its completion it had been understood to be fit for use in a royal household, priced accordingly. And the royals had come for it, along with every specimen like it. Their emissaries had arrived not only from the capital of the twelfth-century Korean state but also from the land of the Jurchens to the north, and from the islands of Japan, and even from the imperial courts of the Chinese emperors themselves, despite their own country’s preeminence in the field. In fact, the Chinese royals praised Korean pottery more effusively than most, with one scholar of the Song Dynasty placing the celadon on his widely-circulated list of “The Ten Treasures of the World”. It must be admitted that few seem to remember what the other nine Treasures were, but it’s assumed the celadon was in fine company.
So what made Korean celadon such a good thing, a treasure even the famous master-potters of Longquan couldn’t replicate? Well, in a word, celadon – and one particular pigment of it, a pallid, bluish-green hue. Some describe it as “kingfisher green”. One famous ceramicist has declared it “the color of Nirvana”. Whatever you’d care to call it, it’s utterly exclusive to ceramics prepared in Jeollanamdo. Its manifestation is caused by a unique level of iron oxide in the clay used by resident potters. The iron oxide undergoes a chemical reaction when subjected to high heat in the oxygen-reduced environment of a live kiln, which changes the clay’s color.
If that doesn’t make the slightest sense to you, don’t be too hard on yourself. The potter who shaped Queen Myeongseong’s gift didn’t understand it, either. An uneducated man who likely never stepped a mile beyond his native Gang-jin, what occurred within the chambers of the communal kiln he co-operated would always be a sweet mystery to him, magic perhaps taught by spirits long ago, or just fortuitously stumbled upon. All he knew for sure was his own part in the process. He and his sons collected the clay from the riverbank, as well as wood from the forested hills when it was their turn to provide it for the kiln. Outside the potter’s workshop they dumped the clay into holes lined with cloth weaved of grass fibers. They added water to produce a gooey mud, then drained that through a sieve to extract its impurities. Depending on the project, they might do this multiple times; once would certainly do for rough implements, but half-a-dozen might not have sufficed for Dr. Horton’s exquisite pitcher. Regardless, once the sludge was suitably free of contaminants, more water was added, as well as wood ash, and here the potters began to differ in technique. Like all his fellow craftsmen, the artist behind Dr. Horton’s pitcher held his own opinion about exactly how much wood ash it was best to add to the clay. He considered the measurement a trade secret and guarded it as fiercely as KFC supposedly does its list of 11 herbs and spices.
The work which truly distinguished one potter from another, however, came next. The potter plopped a chunk of the clay onto his potter’s wheel and sat down to spin it with his foot. The process which followed was and is called “throwing”. No molds or castings were involved here. Every piece was an original. This did mean mistakes were made, forcing the potter to abort the occasional project, but he considered that part of the process. For that matter, it still is today: modern equipment and knowledge haven’t saved 21st century potters from screwing up over half the pieces they attempt. With a present-day statistic like that, there’s little telling how much clay dug up by their 12th century predecessor was successfully turned into product. So it went. As previously mentioned, pottery in those days was no science. It was magic.
And when the magic happened, producing a shape upon the wheel pleasing to his eye, he left that creation to dry for a few days in the sun, and then began the laborious process of wounding its body according to his chosen design – this time, a series of lotus blossoms, symbolic of the Buddha’s compassion. Into the cuts he created, he applied a second batch of clay differently prepared. Each batch would react differently to the fire and assume contrasting colors, creating a vivid pattern. The pitcher would actually have to see the interior of the kiln twice, once at 700 degrees Celcius to harden it enough for daily use, and a second time at an astounding 2,000 degrees, after he had dipped it into the witch’s brew of minerals and oxides that would form the pitcher’s waterproof, lustrous coating. If the spirits were good (and he always bribed them to be, unreliable as they were), that “glaze” would emerge from the flames unblemished and tinted the tone of the sea. It would be a sight fit for the table of an emperor, one whose representative could set up the potter for life with one coveted commission.
Was that work of art the potter found within the kiln’s cooled-down chambers just such a commissioned piece? Was it the outcome of all his professional ambitions, or only the latest vessel to contain them? Either way, the potter undervalued it. He didn’t know that within a hundred years, the Mongolians would invade and leave nobody left alive who could make another one.
Knowing today that they did just that, however, is what makes July’s Gangjin Celadon Festival not just an art festival, but a celebration of the miraculous – because you’ve actually probably seen a lot of celadon around. You see it because Korean ceramicists and academics, in underfunded fits and starts, began a concerted effort in the 1950s to study the antique celadon which still exists – all pieces in Korea are now officially national treasures – and rediscover how to create them. Their results are now on display in store windows throughout the world. Their work has led to the opening of the Gangjin Celadon Museum in Gangjin County, the region from which more than 80% of the world’s green celadon comes. The festival takes place there, beginning the last weekend of this month (July 28-August 5, 2012), and for nine years in a row the Korean Ministry of Culture, Sports, and Tourism has declared it the best local festival in Korea.
If you can’t make it that weekend, though, consider instead hitting the National Museum of Korea sometime soon. “Korean Art from the United States” runs until August 5 at its special exhibition hall and includes an extremely impressive collection of celadon, on loan from various museums in the States. There’s a pitcher there provided by the Brooklyn Museum that’s just magic.