Ash-Glazed Ceramics from Korea and Japan

Ash-Glazed Ceramics from Korea and Japan has been on view at the Seattle Art Museum since July 9, 2025, and is still running. You'll find it on the third floor, in the museum's galleries at 1300 First Ave.

The exhibition brings together 34 ceramic pieces from the museum's own Japanese and Korean collections, and it's arranged to trace the history of ash glazes across different eras, places, and uses. It spans a huge range: ancient Korean funerary and ritual gray wares, early Japanese Sue and Sanage wares, medieval Seto wares, and large storage jars from both medieval and contemporary Japan. The whole thing follows a single thread—the way ash glazes developed and changed over centuries.

That thread starts in the Kofun period (around 250–538), when contact with the southern Korean peninsula brought the potter's wheel and the anagama kiln to Japan. An anagama is a wood-fired kiln built right into a hillside, and it could reach 1200–1400 degrees Celsius—a massive jump from the 800-degree trench kilns that came before. That higher heat produced stronger vessels, which replaced lower-fired wares for ceremonial and ritual use after the 400s. It also gave rise to natural, 'accidental' ash glazes that run from greenish-yellow to deep green, sandy to glossy, dripping to charred—the kind of finishes that still inspire potters today.

Because the show pulls from the museum's permanent holdings, you get to see how those early techniques evolved into the storage jars and refined wares that followed. It's a good look at how a single technological shift—the hotter kiln—changed what these vessels were used for and how they looked. The exhibition is on the third floor of the Seattle Art Museum, 1300 First Ave, and has been open since July 9, 2025.