Young Sook Park x Charles De Viel Castel
A collection of moon jars, reimagined with diamonds
Young Sook Park has partnered with Charles de Viel Castel to create a limited ceramics collection that ignites a new dialogue around the limitations and expectations of ceramic art. Born out of both artists' shared tradition of transcending organic materials, this collection introduces the precarious process of inlaying diamonds into perfectly shaped and delicate ceramic creations. Showcasing the technique for which Park is most renowned, the collection includes two large and five medium moonjars — vulnerable artworks in their own right: only 10% of the jars Park sculpts survive in the kiln. Such is the nature and beauty of her craft. By entrusting the moon jars to Castel's technique, the jars are submitted to new forces when drilled for the inlaying process. The result is a convergence of trust, vision, and tension, built on mutual admiration and reverence for the integrity of clay and stone.
YOUNG SOOK PARK (B. 1947) x CVC STONES
Pado
dated May 2012 on base
White-glazed porcelain with 10 carats of diamonds
15 × 15 inches (38.1 × 38.1 cm)
Pado is a large-format hand-thrown porcelain moon jar in white glaze, with diamonds inlaid across the surface in a scattered constellation pattern. Titled with the Korean word for wave, the jar was thrown by Young Sook Park at her Seoul studio in the seventeenth-century Joseon dalhangari tradition, where two separate halves are kiln-fired and come together to form the moon-shaped jar. Park's dalhangari practice already operates on precarious terms: the two-hemisphere joining, the unpredictable kiln survival rate (only ten percent make it out whole), the imperfect asymmetry that defines a successful moon jar. Entrusting a completed vessel to de Viel Castel's drilling technique introduces a second round of structural risk on top of the first. The diamonds function as a subtle new dimension across the porcelain rather than as ornamentation, catching light against the pure white glaze in a way that reveals them gradually to closer looking.
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. This medium-format moon jar is one of the five, alongside two larger-format jars, created in the collaboration between Park Young Sook and CVC Stones and casts the ancient style of moon jars in a new light.
YOUNG SOOK PARK
Born in 1947, Park was raised in Gyeongju, once the capital of the ancient Silla Dynasty. This famed artistic enclave informed and inspired her dedication to mastering the art of traditional Korean pottery-making. Park spent her childhood among an eighth-century Bulguksa Buddhist temple surrounded by historical art and artifacts. Exploring the surrounding history, she began collecting antiquities from a young age, later attributing her skill for ratio and proportion in her ceramics to this distinctive environment.
Renowned worldwide for her technical abilities, versatility and precision, Park is recognized for her dedication to capturing the long-lost artistic traditions of Korea. In reviving the former methods of the Joseon potters, she demonstrates her patience and mastery of the form and material – achieving nearly impossible feats of scale and perfection.
Young Sook Park's work can be found in permanent collections internationally including the British Museum of Art, London; Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Harvard Art Museum, Cambridge, MA; Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, CA; Korean National Folklore Museum, Seoul, Korea; Musée Royal de Mariemont, Morlanwelz, Belgium; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA; Canadian Government House, Ottawa, Canada; Korean Consulate, New York, NY; Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, WA; Museum of Fine Art Houston; Philadelphia Museum of Art; Peabody-Essex Museum of Art; Leeum - Samsung Museum of Fine Art.
CVC STONES
Charles de Viel Castel founded CVC Stones, celebrated for setting diamonds directly into natural and organic materials. Based in New York, de Viel Castel and his team bring a jeweler's precision to mediums that were never built to hold stone — wood, bone, and now, ceramic.
