Sunday, December 27, 2009

Icheon Ceramics Village

Another in the series of day trips around Seoul. (Blogger dates an entry from when it's started, not when it's posted, which is why it looks like you're not seeing this until about five days later -- with this in mind, please scroll down to make sure you haven't missed any other new additions over the holiday season.) There are a number of smaller towns and villages just to the southeast which make up one of the historic heartlands of the Korean pottery industry. This goes back to the middle ages (in European time) and at one point Korea was second only to China in ceramics technology. There is a good, and free, introductory museum in Gwangju (not to be confused with the larger and better-known city of the same name farther south), and a number of artisans and production sites down the road in the villages around Icheon (not to be confused with Incheon, on the other side of Seoul, where the airport is, or Ichon, a neighbourhood in Seoul.)

We didn't actually see any potters or kilns in action, but looked around a bit and did some token shopping (at the generic store, nothing by a specific artisan. However, the store people did bring us little cups of tea on wooden saucers as we were looking around.) We might have stayed longer but it was starting to snow. As noted in a previous post, the return journey took 4.5 hours, though I read later in the paper that the traffic disaster that occured that afternoon was not to be considered normal or acceptable. The explanation had something to do with the fact that it started snowing a bit earlier than expected, which caused the usual response plan to collapse. (In the photo collage, you'll see someone shoveling with a large signboard -- don't forget that collages in all posts are clickable to view large versions.)

Anyway, this region is not very far away, and I'm sure we'll go back in better weather. I don't know that we really got into the thick of things on this first visit. The most famous spot, Haegang, is that of the founder of the reborn industry (like so many things here, there was a significant interruption due to the Japanese colonial period and then the Korean War), including a museum and working area. The pieces are rather pricey, but it's fun to look through the reject heap of broken shards.