Koryo Heterochromatic Porcelain
Koryo people made Koryo porcelains of unique colours, patterns and shapes, thus demonstrating the fame of the country all over the world.
Heterochromatic porcelain, along with celadon, is a cultural asset which showed a high plane of ceramic workmanship during the Koryo Dynasty.
Doctor Jang Chol Man, Section Chief of the Archaeological Institute under the Academy of Social Sciences, said the Koryo heteochromatic porcelain is a legacy of traditional ceramic workmanship created between the late 11th century and the mid-12th century, and continued:
"Generally, Koryo porcelains can be divided into celadon, white porcelain, black porcelain, dressed porcelain and heterochromatic porcelain according to main indices such as ground earth, surface colour and manufacturing technique.
Heterochromatic porcelain is made by separately kneading well the earth for celadon and the earth for white porcelain with different contents of iron oxide and the red earth with a lot of iron oxide and putting them together to shape a vessel and coat it with celadon glaze before baking.
The baked porcelain has patterns of texture like the grain of mixed white, blue and black colours in its inside and outside, which are expressed in various ways such as oblique line or horizontal line according to kneading methods.
During the Koryo Dynasty, the heterochromatic porcelain was produced only in some restricted regions and it was little handed down. But it represents novel idea and rich artistic emotion of the Koryo porcelain makers to create new works, making the viewers feel unique sense of beauty."
The unique Koryo heterochromatic porcelain was later buried in the moss of history soon. There were no elementary data on its manufacturing technique and even a few remains disappeared owing to the moves of the Japanese imperialists to obliterate the Korean cultural assets.
The Koryo heterochromatic porcelain manufacturing technique, which had long disappeared, came into being again thanks to the policy of the government of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea on the protection of cultural heritage and it was registered as a national intangible cultural heritage in May 2018.