Here at Birthday Blossoms, we love when birth month flowers pop up in unexpected places. We recently spotted November’s birth month flower on a field trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. The current exhibition Lineages: Korean Art at the Met features pieces from The Met’s historical collection as well as loans of modern and contemporary Korean art. The blend of a backward glance with a forward vision spotlights much that is beautiful and interesting about Korean art. The gallery is quite small, and the pieces are close enough to whisper to one another, sharing themes, styles, and ideas which form a visibly continuous line from as far back as the twelfth century to the present day. Two pieces in particular caught our attention. The photographs above show the reason.
The dish pictured is mid-fifteenth century buncheong ware with a design of lovely chrysanthemums. The term buncheong was coined in the nineteen-thirties. Buncheong is distinct from its more well-known cousin celadon, which is characterized by tones of green, blue, and gray. In contrast, buncheong ware is gray-hued and the pieces have well-defined, stamped patterns, such as on the pictured dish. It’s a small dish, only 7 ¼ inches in diameter, and its beauty is a muted, reticent one. A lovely example of celadon can be seen in the pictured flute from the early thirteenth century. The flute is stoneware with an inlaid design of chrysanthemums, cranes, and clouds under celadon glaze. The simple lines and subtle color tones of this flute were mesmerizing.
All of the pieces, old and new, were lovely, and it was with great pleasure that we passed time in the Arts of Korea Gallery enjoying the exhibit and a unique sighting of November’s beloved birth month flower, the chrysanthemum.