Sapal. A bowl-shaped bowl of rice dishes in the Joseon Dynasty. In the Joseon Dynasty, each meal was served in one bowl, so the bowls were relatively large in size. While some of the top-quality household wares are made of blue-and-white porcelain or yanggok white porcelain, recent ordinary wares are pure white, made of coarse porcelain fired in local kilns with a rich local flavor, or imported from Japan. In the early Yi Dynasty, about 500 years ago, there were various types of wares including kuwakute, mishimete, e-mishimete, hakeme-te, and e-hakeme-te, as well as other types of wares. These wares were appreciated by potters from the mid-Muromachi period through the Azuchi-Momoyama period to the early Edo period (1603-1868), and some of them were called “great masterpieces,” “masterpieces,” or “chukyo masterpieces. During the Goryeo period, metalworking was also highly developed, as was ceramics, and most of the rice bowls were made of metal as well. These are the so-called “sahari” type of pieces that can be found in many contemporary Goryeo excavated artifacts, but there are also extremely fine celadon wares that are thought to have been favorite articles of kings and kings’ officials. The shape of the bowls can be divided into large, medium, and small, and those with open mouths in the shape of a morning glory are called palaki, those with open mouths are called tachi-ware, and those with tightened mouths are called hachi-yuwagashi, usually used for women’s bowls, and those similarly shaped but slightly larger and used for soup bowls are yuwagashi. These types of bowls originated in bronze vessels of the Goryeo Dynasty, and the style has been handed down ever since. This shows the persistence of the shapes of Korean vessels. In the past, the rice bowls of the nobles of the inner palace of the Yi royal family in Joseon were still made of pure silver, which had inherited the shape of the bowls. (Kato Kankaku, “Joseon Ceramic Namekyo.”)
