From the February 2023 issue of Apollo. Preview and subscribe here.
Robert Mintz of the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco explains how the tension between tigers and magpies in Korean folk tales made its way on to a blue-and-white porcelain vase
We know that this magpie and tiger vase is a decorated vase and we know it is porcelain, so it’s a high-status material with elaborate decoration. Could it have been used as a vase? Probably not, it is a decorative object unto itself for a high-status residence. Does this mean a palace? Maybe. Does this mean the court? Maybe. Does it mean a temple? Maybe. It could be found in any high-status space but clearly it is a prestige object. We know it was likely made during the 18th century, but we don’t know anything more specific than that.
From the type of cobalt slip that was used to paint the decoration we know that the vase was likely made during the 18th century. The shade of this cobalt is a type that was being actively imported from China at that period. Korea had discovered its own sources of cobalt for decoration of wares but those produced a darker blue, a kind of blue-purple, which wasn’t preferred by collectors. They preferred this light and delicate blue and during the 18th century there was a flourishing of this shade. This was the popular colour if you had the resources to acquire it.
The reason for its fashionability is hard to pin down, but much of East Asia – Korean society, Japanese society – looked to China and Chinese productions of cobalt blue decoration on white porcelain. The popularity of the colour ebbs and flows over time depending on who is making which kind of blue-decorated white wares but at the root of it all is wanting to look like the original type, that original type being a Chinese type.
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