Warming Bowl (seungban) with Design of Lotus Blossoms

This celadon-glazed bowl has a delicately incised floral pattern and exceptional blue-green color. Such beauty in Korean ceramics was admired, even by the discriminating Chinese who unabashedly wrote of the remarkable "green wares of the Goryo," during the early twelfth century, when its finest ceramics rivaled imperial Chinese wares. The form of the bowl's lip and foot distinguish this very rare work from other Goryo ceramics because they are closely modeled on Chinese palace wares.