Tea bowl

In the late 1890s, Freer acquired a number of simple, earth-toned tea bowls from the New York branch of Yamanaka and Company, where the collector was a regular customer. He believed this bowl, with its gray yellow-brown glaze and fine dark crackle, was from Japan. Scholars have since debated its origins, wondering if it were perhaps from Korea, not Japan as Freer thought. The most recent thinking is that this bowl is indeed Korean, dating from the Joseon period in the seventeenth century.