Lee Young Ho 이영호

The rich smell of roasted sweet potatoes greets us as we step through the door of Lee Young Ho’s rural studio. Its truly the perfect welcome on a freezing December afternoon. Over cups of tea and plates of sweet potato we discuss his fondness for porcelain and the reason he devoted his life to making pottery. “As a boy I always liked to make things” he explains. At Seoul National University he ended up by falling in love with porcelain. “I just wanted to make bowls and touch clay”. He had overcome his family’s opposition to the life of an artist and had gotten his BFA from a prestigious university but now he began the really difficult part of his career, supporting himself as a potter. Lee Ok Sun, his wife, was an industrial design major and she became his assistant and chief critic. The two have spent the last two decades running a porcelain studio and producing fine tableware by hand. Never taking a teaching job and passing up any opportunities for solo exhibitions Lee Young Ho has garnered a reputation as a dedicated producer of functional ware whose first concern is the purchaser and user of his porcelain.

Despite his refusal to court fame his innovative design for a table service took the Bronze prize at the 2007 World Ceramic Biennale at Icheon, Korea. The winning table service is white porcelain and it refers back to the great white porcelain tradition of the Joseon Dynasty but it in no way imitates the form of the ancient ceramics. This is the core of Lee Young Ho’s philosophy which is deeply rooted in his admiration for the strength of the historical masters without blindly duplicating their efforts. His cool strong porcelain forms with little or no decoration are intended to be the perfect vehicle for the sensual enjoyment of food and drink. They certainly suited tea and sweet potatoes.

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