Im Man Jae 임만재

It was one of those spur of the moment invitations that led us to the studio of Im Man Jae. We had spent the day riding the length of the Korean peninsula to attend the much ballyhooed opening of the Shin Sang Ho exhibition at the Clayarch Museum in Gimhae and after its conclusion as the crowd drained away friendly gallery owner Woo Byung Tak mentioned that he was stopping at a fine rural studio on his way back to Seoul. Would we be interested in tagging along with a group of students and some collectors? Well we always try to take every opportunity that presents itself and so we found ourselves rounding a curve in the rapidly industrializing countryside north of Busan and coming upon a multichamber wood kiln built right next to the road.

Beyond a courtyard guarded by a sleeping momdog we found Im Man Jae in his studio putting wax resist on the feet of cups and teapots as an assistant handled other finishing chores. Working with local clays Im Man Jae concentrates on producing a range of tea wares which are much sought by Japanese collectors. Sitting in the little traditional Korean house which serves as his showroom we were served the first cup of Japanese style powdered green tea which we encountered in our 10 month research project. This orientation towards Japanese esthetics is perhaps the result of his training in a studio which was established to sell to the Japanese market. Being very near the ferry port of Busan his studio is visited by numbers of Japanese tourists searching for the ”unsophisticated” tea bowls immortalized in the writing of Yanagi Soetsu, the Japanese father of the folk craft movement championed by Bernard Leach.

Working since his teens in a rural setting, wearing traditional clothes, and living in a mudplastered house would seem to set Im Man Jae in direct contrast to the university educated urban ceramic artists who produce nonfunctional work yet both represent Korean ceramics today.

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