Byeol

YOUNG SOOK PARK (B. 1947) x CVC STONES 
Byeol
dated May 2015 on base
white-glazed porcelain with 5 carats of diamonds
9 × 9 3/4 inches (22.9 × 24.8 cm)

Byeol is a hand-thrown porcelain moon jar in white glaze with diamonds inlaid across the surface in a constellation pattern that gives the piece its name, "byeol" being the Korean word for star. Young Sook Park threw the jar at her Seoul studio in the seventeenth-century Joseon dalhangari tradition — the two-hemisphere construction that produces the moonlike form the name describes — and only ten percent of the jars she throws survive the kiln, which is what makes each finished piece a document of the ninety percent that didn't. The diamond decoration comes from the collaboration with Charles de Viel Castel of CVC Stones, who drilled and set the diamonds into the completed vessel using his proprietary inlay technique, a second act of structural risk applied to a form that had already cleared the fire once. This medium-format moon jar is one of the five, alongside two larger-format jars, created in the collaboration between Young Sook Park and CVC Stones and casts the ancient style of moon jars in a new light.

The Young Sook Park × de Viel Castel collaboration produced a small run of moon jars released through YSP Gallery, drawing on constellation imagery as the guiding design language. The collaboration itself emerged from a shared belief between the two artists in transcending natural materials — clay on Park's side, stone on de Viel Castel's — and set out to open a new dialogue around the limitations and expectations of ceramic art. The result is a convergence of trust, vision, and tension, built on mutual admiration between the Seoul and New York studios and a shared reverence for the integrity of both clay and stone. Rather than functioning as adornment, the diamonds bring out a new dimension through their subtle placement — an invitation to closer looking rather than a decorative act.