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I recently made a trip to Hadong in the western part of South Gyeongsang Province. Hadong has long been famous for its wild green tea and traditional pottery.
Generations of people from Hadong have made good use of their soil and the clay underneath it. Ever since one of my colleagues from Hadong presented me with tea and a tea bowl, the aroma of this delicious traditional beverage has pervaded my house.
That got me hooked on Hadong, its distinguished tea and its beautiful pottery. I want to share this experience with you today. It is a Cinderella tale. A tale I have long appreciated. Cinderella is the girl who was deprived of the love of her own family and relatives and the appreciation of the neighborhood. A royal prince from far away passed by, he discovered and recognized her hidden charms. He married her and then she was envied by all. Recently, I have come to realize that the story of the humble pottery in Hadong is another version of this Cinderella story.
Green tea seeds were brought from Tang, China in 828 during the reign of King Heungdeok of the Shilla Kingdom. At that time, tea seeds were planted on the warm, fertile southern slopes of Mt. Jiri in Hadong according to the King’s orders. Cultivation of tea became widespread and wild tea leaves are still being grown in this region today, making Hadong the home of Korean tea.
Also, Hadong was the home of the ``maksabal,” a simple plain coarse tea bowl with a white slip, complemented with natural beauty of coarse rice. It is chipped, cracked, irregularly fired and differs from those of elaborate Goryeo celadon and Joseon white porcelain, which were used for the upper and noble classes only. Remarkably, these bowls were made by anonymous potters mainly from the Hadong area where clay rich with iron was readily available.
Ever since a Japanese tea drinker from Osaka discovered the quality of Hadong tea bowls, a strong desire has emerged among the well to do Japanese tea lovers to also hold these humble bowls in their hands. They are indeed perfectly suited to the aesthetics of Japan’s traditional tea ceremonies. From the top generals of the past to the millionaires of today, Japanese aesthetes have sought to acquire these unpretentious tea bowls. Already in the 16th century, a bowl called “Ido Chawan” has become a national treasure in Japan.
But only recently academic research by Japanese and Korean historians has revealed that “Ido Chawan” indeed originated from Korean potters of the Joseon Kingdom. Many such bowls were exported to Japan during the 16th century from the port of Hadong after being made at the nearby ceramics village, Jingyo-myeon. Later Ido Chawan were reproduced in Japan by Korean potters who were taken captive to Japan during the Hideyoshi Invasion (1592-1598), and afterwards by their descendants.
`Ido Chawan became the most coveted tea bowls in Japan. Japanese connoisseurs named them “Sacred and Heavenly Goods.” And that is quite a legacy for what initially began as a humble commoner’s bowl during the Joseon Dynasty in Korea! It is a great story of success.
The only thing I regret is that we Koreans did not recognize the beauty of our Ido Chawan Cinderella ourselves, but that we had to wait for our Japanese neighbors to do so. Let it be a lesson on the sense of beauty. Let us be aware of the charm of today’s Korean ceramics all by ourselves!
Choe Chong-dae is a guest columnist of The Korea Times and the president of Dea-kwang International Co., as well as a director of the Korean-Swedish Association. He can be reached at dkic98@chol.com.
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