Vase

Vases of this shape, known as maebyeong in Korean and meiping in Chinese, were used for display of single branches from flowering trees. These examples represent two early attempts to add another color to celadon-glazed ceramics. The clouds on one vase were painted directly onto the gray body in liquid white clay (slip) and then covered with the nearly clear green glaze. Although appropriate for the depiction of clouds, this kind of watery, freehand decoration would prove to be difficult to control and would be replaced soon after by inlaid decoration. The iron-brown painting on the other vase was also applied under the glaze, and in this case the iron affected the color of the glaze—another problem that would be alleviated by the invention of inlaid decoration.