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MikeOz and Michels, this is a follow up on help you provided for my Celadon vase in October (images below).

I’m trying to learn as my interest grows and 'get my head around' characters used in Chinese, Japanese and Korean ceramics; so excuse some probable inane comments.

For my vase you kindly identified: Korean and Songwol (kiln). MikeOz, you also explained how the characters used by these three nations are heavily overlaid and essentially based on Chinese.

So…my 3 questions are thus:

1. How were you able to immediately identify my pot as Korean - is this because you recognised the mark as written in Hangul?

2. Using a commercial translator (which I accept may not be ‘great’). I got the following Korean meanings for the symbols…
松 - pine
月 - month
松月 - Matsu Moon
How were you able to identify Songwol as the kiln from this?

3. A slightly aside question, how are you able to type these characters (I think I would find this useful)?

Thank you for your patience.
Jack

Not sure what happened with the images...so here goes again...
Jack

Dear Jack,
My answers:

1) Mikeoz answered "Korean", so I hope he can answer this question.

2) At first the signature seemed to me Japanese, but because Mikeoz said "Korean", I started looking for it. First by putting these 2 characters in the Google translator Korean-English. See first picture below. That gave me "Song-wol", which was translated in English as "Matsu moon". Next I entered Google search with keywords "song-wol korea celadon", which brought me to this site:
https://onih.pastperfectonline.com/webobject/9B55D16E-A7F4-4227-9754-968170670181
See my 2nd picture, so for me that made sense.

3) I do not speak or write Japanese, but I use this site to determine Japanese Kanji characters:
https://jisho.org/#radical
this allows you to compile Japanese Kanji characters, which you can put into the Google translator Japanese-English for pronunciation and translation. Helped me a lot.

Regards,
Martin.

I can't answer for Martin Michels, but here are my answers to your questions.

My immediate decision was based on a recognition of the Korean aesthetic, both in the shape and the decoration, together with a recognition of a Korean penchant for that crackle glaze.

The mark is not written in Hangul, but in Chinese characters.

松 is pronounced Song in Korea and 月 is pronounced Wol. Martin did the research and found a probable identification of the potter and the kiln.

Question 3. This depends on which operating system you are using.

MikeOz/Martin,
Thank you both for the further information...this has been most helpful and begins to 'clue me in' to trying to interpret oriental characters myself.
My operating system is Safari.
Many thanks again...you both are invaluable sources to this site.
Jack

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