I spent two weeks in the winter of 2019 at a small kiln complex outside Gangjin, where the Goryeo potters once fired the finest celadon in East Asia. The workshop was nothing like the grand ceramic centers I had imagined — just wood-fired climbing kilns built into a hillside, their chimneys half-hidden by bare persimmon trees. On my third morning, the master potter handed me a bisque-fired bowl and a blunt iron tool. “Carve only what is necessary,” he said, and turned back to his own work without another word.
The Economy of Inlay
Sanggam, the inlay technique that defines Goryeo celadon, is often described as the opposite of painting. Where a painter adds color to a surface, the inlay artisan carves into the bisque-fired clay, pressing white and black slip into the grooves before scraping the surface clean. What remains is embedded beneath the glaze, inseparable from the vessel itself. There is no correcting once the kiln has fired.