Gangjin Kiln Sites | |
Korean name | |
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Hangul | 강진고려청자요지 |
Hanja | |
Revised Romanization | Gangjin Goryeo cheongja yoji |
McCune–Reischauer | Kangjin Koryŏch'ŏngja yoji |
Gangjingun Kiln Sites is a tentative World Heritage site listed by the South Korean government at UNESCO. It is a complex of 188 kilns which produced Goryeo ware. The kiln sites are located in Gangjin-gun,Jeollanam-do,South Korea near the sea. Mountains in the north provided the necessary raw materials such as firewood,kaolinite,and silicon dioxide for the master potters while a well established system of distribution transported pottery throughout Korea and facilitated export to China and Japan.
Pottery during the Goryeo dynasty reached very high levels of refinement. The kilns at Buan-gun in Jeollabuk-do produced earthenware while the Ganjingun kilns produced celadon wares. The kiln sites are important today because they are the remnants of the pottery culture.
The 188 kilns of the Gangjingun Kiln Sites are located in the regions of Yongunni,Gyeyulli,Sadangni,and Sudongni. 98 of these are designated as historic sites by the Korean government.
The 75 kilns in Yongunni are in generally in good condition and are some of the earliest dated. These kilns are dated to the 10th and 11th centuries. These kilns provide clues for scholars interested in discovering the origins and kiln characteristics of the first Korean celadons manufactured. Fragments of ancient Chinese kiln products have also been uncovered in this region.
59 kilns remain in Gyeyulli and the kilns in this region date from the 11th century to the 13th century. Excavations have uncovered pottery similar in style to Yongunni pottery but most pottery shards are of the conventional inlaid celadon type.
The 43 kilns of Sadangni are dated from the 12th to 14th centuries. The kilns at Tangion village date from the early 12th century to the 13th century and are representative of the Goryeo ceramic kilns which were used in the production of Goryeo celadons,famous for their superior kingfisher color and inlay technique. The pottery produced here would be during the peak of the creative development of Korean celadon. An additional six kilns remain in Sudongni which date to the 14th century but most have been destroyed due to river erosion and farming. These celadon kilns were still employing techniques from previous centuries although the colors,patterns,and glazes used were very diverse.
The Daegumyeon kiln site was rediscovered in 1914. Excavations unearthed a wide variety of pottery fragments diverse in shape,size and colors. The Daegumyeon kiln site is unusual because of the high concentration of kilns and because the dates of these kilns range throughout the entire Goryeo Dynasty. This site,therefore,is very valuable as a resource for scholars and archaeologists. A fully restored kiln based on those excavations is now housed at the National Museum of Korea. The Goryeo Celadon Office was established in 1986 to preserve kiln sites and also to reproduce and reconstruct the techniques lost many hundreds of years ago.
The Goryeo Celadon Museum in Gangjin features the history of the sites and houses a collection.
Pottery is the process and the products of forming vessels and other objects with clay and other raw materials, which are fired at high temperatures to give them a hard and durable form. The place where such wares are made by a potter is also called a pottery. The definition of pottery, used by the ASTM International, is "all fired ceramic wares that contain clay when formed, except technical, structural, and refractory products". End applications include tableware, decorative ware, sanitaryware, and in technology and industry such as electrical insulators and laboratory ware. In art history and archaeology, especially of ancient and prehistoric periods, pottery often means vessels only, and sculpted figurines of the same material are called terracottas.
Longquan celadon (龍泉青瓷) is a type of green-glazed Chinese ceramic, known in the West as celadon or greenware, produced from about 950 to 1550. The kilns were mostly in Lishui prefecture in southwestern Zhejiang Province in the south of China, and the north of Fujian Province. Overall a total of some 500 kilns have been discovered, making the Longquan celadon production area one of the largest historical ceramic producing areas in China. "Longquan-type" is increasingly preferred as a term, in recognition of this diversity, or simply "southern celadon", as there was also a large number of kilns in north China producing Yaozhou ware or other Northern Celadon wares. These are similar in many respects, but with significant differences to Longquan-type celadon, and their production rose and declined somewhat earlier.
Gangjin County is a county in South Jeolla Province, South Korea. Gangjin county proper was established in 1895. The county office is located in Gangjin-eup.
Celadon is a term for pottery denoting both wares glazed in the jade green celadon color, also known as greenware or "green ware", and a type of transparent glaze, often with small cracks, that was first used on greenware, but later used on other porcelains. Celadon originated in China, though the term is purely European, and notable kilns such as the Longquan kiln in Zhejiang province are renowned for their celadon glazes. Celadon production later spread to other parts of East Asia, such as Japan and Korea, as well as Southeast Asian countries, such as Thailand. Eventually, European potteries produced some pieces, but it was never a major element there. Finer pieces are in porcelain, but both the color and the glaze can be produced in stoneware and earthenware. Most of the earlier Longquan celadon is on the border of stoneware and porcelain, meeting the Chinese but not the European definitions of porcelain.
Korean ceramic history begins with the oldest earthenware from around 8000 BC. Throughout the history, the Korean peninsula has been home to lively, innovative, and sophisticated art making. Long periods of stability have allowed for the establishment of spiritual traditions, and artisan technologies specific to the region. Korean ceramics in Neolithic period have a unique geometric patterns of sunshine, or it is decorated with twists. In Southern part of Korea, Mumun pottery were popular. Mumun togi used specific minerals to make colors of red and black. Korean pottery developed a distinct style of its own, with its own shapes, such as the moon jar or Buncheong sagi which is a new form between earthenware and porcelain, white clay inlay celadon of Goryeo, and later styles like minimalism that represents Korean Joseon philosophers' idea. Many talented Korean potters were captured and brought to Japan during the invasions of Korea, where they heavily contributed to advancing Japanese pottery. Arita ware, founded by Yi Sam-pyeong opened a new era of porcelain in Japan. Another Japanese representative porcelain, Satsuma ware was also founded by Dang-gil Shim and Pyeong-ui Park. 14th generation of Su-kwan Shim have been using the same name to his grandfather and father to honor they are originally Korean, 14th Su-kwan Shim is honorable citizen of Namwon, Korea.
Korean arts include traditions in calligraphy, music, painting and pottery, often marked by the use of natural forms, surface decoration and bold colors or sounds.
Chinese ceramics show a continuous development since pre-dynastic times and are one of the most significant forms of Chinese art and ceramics globally. The first pottery was made during the Palaeolithic era. Chinese ceramics range from construction materials such as bricks and tiles, to hand-built pottery vessels fired in bonfires or kilns, to the sophisticated Chinese porcelain wares made for the imperial court and for export. Porcelain was a Chinese invention and is so identified with China that it is still called "china" in everyday English usage.
Joseon white porcelain or Joseon baekja refers to the white porcelains produced during the Joseon dynasty (1392-1910).
Jun ware is a type of Chinese pottery, one of the Five Great Kilns of Song dynasty ceramics. Despite its fame, much about Jun ware remains unclear, and the subject of arguments among experts. Several different types of pottery are covered by the term, produced over several centuries and in several places, during the Northern Song dynasty (960–1127), Jin dynasty (1115–1234) and Yuan dynasty (1271–1368), and lasting into the early Ming dynasty (1368–1644).
Manwoldae, or Mangwoldae, was the main palace of the Goryeo Dynasty of Korea. It did not have an official name, such as "Gyeongbokgung", because it was an imperial palace like the imperial palaces of China. Located in the Goryeo capital of Kaesong, the palace was burned in 1011, 1126, 1171, 1225, and 1362. The name "Manwoldae" was given to the ruins of the palace during the 14th or 15th century of the Joseon period.
Qingbai ware is a type of Chinese porcelain produced under the Song Dynasty and Yuan dynasty, defined by the ceramic glaze used. Qingbai ware is white with a blue-greenish tint, and is also referred to as Yingqing. It was made in Jiangxi province in south-eastern China, in several locations including Jingdezhen, and is arguably the first type of porcelain to be produced on a very large scale. However, it was not at the time a prestigious ware, and was mostly used for burial wares and exports, or a middle-rank Chinese market. The quality is very variable, reflecting these different markets; the best pieces can be very thin-walled.
Goryeo ware refers to all types of Korean pottery and porcelain produced during the Goryeo dynasty, from 918 to 1392, but most often refers to celadon (greenware).
Chinese influences on Islamic pottery cover a period starting from at least the 8th century CE to the 19th century. This influence of Chinese ceramics has to be viewed in the broader context of the considerable importance of Chinese culture on Islamic arts in general.
Cizhou ware or Tz'u-chou ware is a wide range of Chinese ceramics from between the late Tang dynasty and the early Ming dynasty, but especially associated with the Northern Song to Yuan period in the 11–14th century. It has been increasingly realized that a very large number of sites in northern China produced these wares, and their decoration is very variable, but most characteristically uses black and white, in a variety of techniques. For this reason Cizhou-type is often preferred as a general term. All are stoneware in Western terms, and "high-fired" or porcelain in Chinese terms. They were less high-status than other types such as celadons and Jun ware, and are regarded as "popular", though many are finely and carefully decorated.
The Goryeo Celadon Museum (고려청자박물관), formerly known also as the Gangjin Celadon Museum, is a museum located in Sadang-ri, Gangjin County, South Jeolla, South Korea. It was opened in 1997 and features the history of the Gangjin Kiln Sites.
Pampanga lies within the Central Plain region and has a total land area of 2,180.70 square kilometers. Together with Bulacan, Nueva Ecija, Pangasinan and Tarlac, the region includes a total area of approximately 5,900 square miles, mostly composed of lowlands and arable areas.
Porac, Pampanga contains areas in and near Babo Balukbuk in Porac, Philippines that have strong indication of human habitation, according to investigations published on the University of the Philippines Archaeological Studies Program website. Later test excavations confirmed this conclusion through the presence of materials dated around the 12th century to the 17th century C.E.
Jizhou ware or Chi-chou ware is Chinese pottery from Jiangxi province in southern China; the Jizhou kilns made a number of different types of wares over the five centuries of production. The best known wares are simple shapes in stoneware, with a strong emphasis on subtle effects in the dark glazes, comparable to Jian ware, but often combined with other decorative effects. In the Song dynasty they achieved a high prestige, especially among Buddhist monks and in relation to tea-drinking. The wares often use leaves or paper cutouts to create resist patterns in the glaze, by leaving parts of the body untouched.
A dragon kiln or "climbing kiln", is a traditional Chinese form of kiln, used for Chinese ceramics, especially in southern China. It is long and thin, and relies on having a fairly steep slope, typically between 10° and 16°, up which the kiln runs. The kiln could achieve the very high temperatures, sometimes as high as 1400 °C, necessary for high-fired wares including stoneware and porcelain, which long challenged European potters, and some examples were very large, up to 60 metres long, allowing up to 25,000 pieces to be fired at a time. By the early 12th century CE they might be over 135 metres long, allowing still larger quantities to be fired; more than 100,000 have been claimed.
The Haegang Ceramics Museum is Korea's first museum dedicated to ceramics and is located in Icheon, Gyeonggi Province. The museum is devoted to researching and exhibiting Korean ceramics, including celadon ware, punch’ong ware and white porcelain.