The Korean Ceramics Revival
Young Korean ceramicists are reinterpreting a thousand-year tradition for a market that is finally ready.
The celadon tradition of Goryeo Korea is one of the great achievements in the history of craft. Its contemporary inheritors are not imitating it. They are doing something more difficult: they are taking its underlying principles — the preference for restraint over display, the respect for the material, the long tradition of objects made to be used rather than observed — and applying them to contemporary forms that do not need to look ancient in order to carry historical weight.
The generation of ceramicists now working in studios across Seoul and its surrounding provinces has emerged in a particular context: a global market that has become, in the past decade, genuinely interested in Korean craft. The export of Korean cultural forms — music, film, food, fashion — has created an audience for Korean objects that did not exist, or not at this scale, fifteen years ago.
The best makers among this generation have responded to this attention with a seriousness that is itself a form of quality. They have not accelerated production to meet demand. They have not simplified forms to make them more legible to international buyers. They have continued to make objects at the pace and scale that the objects require, and they have let the market come to them.
The market has come.
“The best makers have not accelerated production to meet demand. They have continued to make objects at the pace the objects require.”
