{"id":3402,"date":"2015-12-29T17:38:50","date_gmt":"2015-12-30T01:38:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/?p=3402"},"modified":"2015-12-29T17:38:50","modified_gmt":"2015-12-30T01:38:50","slug":"korea-blog-an-english-ceramicist-in-korea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/?p=3402","title":{"rendered":"Korea Blog: An English Ceramicist in Korea"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/pcxsx1namun1ljpw72henvgf.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/KB-Roger-Law.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"338\" \/><\/strong><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>When I think of my favorite travelers to read, I think mostly of Brits: Jan Morris, from Wales; Colin Thubron, from London; Pico Iyer, born in Oxford to an Indian family and raised part-time in California. But none of them, however much I wish they would, have written at length on South Korea.\u00a0 In the peripatetic late chapters of her life after more or less quitting England, Isabella Bird Bishop alighted in Korea and produced a book still read by Korea enthusiasts today, though she did it back in the 1890s. The very well-known Simon Winchester and the less well-known Clive Leatherdale did get out here more recently \u2014 but by \u201cmore recently,\u201d I mean the 1980s.<\/p>\n<p>So it made for a relatively important new chapter in the history of British visitors to Korea when Roger Law arrived this year to put together <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/programmes\/b06v5xhx\"><em>Art and Seoul<\/em><\/a>, a five-part series for BBC Radio 4. Law, whose name may not ring a bell to non-British readers, began his career as a caricaturist in the 1960s, going on in the 1980s to co-create the popular satirical puppet show (yes, really) <em>Splitting Image<\/em>. The show\u2019s end in 1996, and thus the end of the arduous work of public figure-lampooning puppetcraft it demanded, gave Law a chance to pursue a new artistic dream: studying ceramics in China.<\/p>\n<p>At some point in this East-oriented period of his life, Law took a glance over at the work of his neighbors on the peninsula and found himself captivated by the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Moon_jar\">moon jar<\/a>, in his words \u201ca misshapen round pot, and it looks so simple \u2014 but it\u2019s not. To me, it\u2019s the very essence of the Korean soul.\u201d He sets what he sees as this \u201cquintessentially Korean\u201d object against the \u201cpretty flashy\u201d pottery of China where \u201ceverything has to be perfect \u2014 <em>perfect<\/em>\u201d and the \u201cartsy-fartsy\u201d pottery of Japan. \u201cKorean pottery has a simplicity, an earthiness about it,\u201d he observes, \u201cthat seems to me to be very Korean.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Read the whole thing <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.lareviewofbooks.org\/the-korea-blog\/english-ceramicist-korea-bbc-radio-journey-bumbling-discovery\/\">at the\u00a0<em>Los Angeles Review of Books<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When I think of my favorite travelers to read, I think mostly of Brits: Jan Morris, from Wales; Colin Thubron, from London; Pico Iyer, born in Oxford to an Indian family and raised part-time in California. But none of them, however much I wish they would, have written at length on South Korea.\u00a0 In the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[74],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3402","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-korea-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3402","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3402"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3402\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3403,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3402\/revisions\/3403"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.colinmarshall.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}