Among the excellent national cultural heritages of the Korean nation with long history of 5 000 years and brilliant culture are Koryo ceramics produced in the period of Koryo (918—1392,) the first unified state in Korea.
Great leader Comrade Kim Il Sung said.
“The people of Koryo greatly developed the printing industry by inventing metal type for the first time in the world and manufactured the Koryo ceramics which the world values as treasures because of their distinctive colours, patterns and models. All these made our country famous.”
On the basis of ceramic manufacturing technique ac
Koryo ceramics were spread even to Europe, being famous in the period of Koryo.
They made different shapes with mud and burnt them at 1 100—1 200℃ in the closed furnace.
Koryo ceramics have beautiful colours.
There are white, green, red, black, brown and other-colored ceramics but the most excellent one is blue.
This blue ceramic as beautiful as the clear and blue sky of Korea is well praised by the world people as the “best one.”
Koryo ceramics have special patterns.
There are embossed, concave, perforated and inlaid figures, among which inlaid ceramics that show extremely excellent craft are admired by the world people as cultural heritage. It is called blue ceramic.
Making inlaid ceramic, they dug pattern holes on the surface and filled them with white, black and red mud and then pasted porcelain enamel and burnt in furnace.
This technique gives t
With this technique, they depicted various beautiful patterns like green pine trees, flowers and butterflies, woolly clouds, flying cranes, pairs of mandarin ducks or water ducks playing in the river under the willow trees.
These patterns express vivid natural landscapes of beautiful Korea in good combination with the blue background.
Koryo ceramics are diversified in kinds and beautiful in shapes.
Vases, water bowls and kettles shaped after bamboo shoot, bottle gourd, melon and water melon, grapes, plants, dove, mandarin duck, turtle, duck, lion and other animals attract the minds of the people as they are beautiful, delicate and peculiar.
Even today, Koryo ceramics are valuable national cultural heritage that adds national pride and become the common treasure of humanity, enjoying envy and admiration of the world people and taking dignified position in the history of the world ceramics.
