Large, Broad-Shouldered Jar with Decoration of Two Striding Dragons, Each Pursuing a Flaming Jewel

Unknown artist

mid 18th century

Blue-and-white ware: porcelain with decoration painted in underglaze cobalt blue

Arthur M. Sackler Museum

Large, broad-shouldered, narrow-waisted jars of this type were popular in Korea in the late seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century examples have a short, collarlike neck and an exaggerated profile, with bulging shoulders and a constricted waist; nineteenth-century examples, by contrast, show a more subdued profile but have a tall neck and a beveled foot. In the East Asian dualistic yin-yang interpretation of the universe, the dragon symbolizes the yang, or male, principle, while the phoenix represents the yin, or female, principle. Associated with water, the auspicious dragon is typica