The Evolution of Moon Jars  in Korean Ceramics

Since the emergence of contemporary Korean ceramics, the ‘inheritance of tradition’ has become an overarching subject constantly discussed by Korean ceramists. In particular, the adopted ‘moon jar’ in Korean art seeks to minimize insincere traces by reviving natural beauty, and has become a symbol of the rejection of artificiality. Many art historians, art critics and artists have no hesitation in describing the moon jar as the paragon of Korean ceramics.

Many artists in the Korean ceramic scene have occupied themselves with working on moon jars, regarding them as a symbol of a tradition they must restore and recreate. To these ceramists, the moon jar is not only an aesthetic quest, but a mission they must complete or accomplish. The interpretations, applications, and experiments pertaining to moon jars that have been carried out by Korean ceramic artists since the 1950s are regarded as being a major point of contact between Western art and indigenous tradition – with great success. However, either functionalism or commercialism is more potently sensed in today’s interpretations and representations of the moon jar. There has been no new or innovative reinterpretations of the moon jar as a cultural vessel that encapsulates the beauty of the current times, primarily because the Korean ceramic world did not progress the subject of inheriting tradition and therefore failed to lay a philosophical foundation as it underwent Japanese colonial rule following the Korean War. Major crafts-related organizations and institutions were repeatedly opened and closed in a brief span of time during the late 1950s. The Korean ceramic world of the 1960s