After a while, Ada had had all the classical Greek culture she could take (Michael, being in the thick of a months-long Greek goddess kick, was up for much more). So she and I took refuge in Asian antiquities, many of the best of which, like those of ancient Greece, have ended up in Bloomsbury.
We headed for Korea, inspired by Sangil, Ada's friend from first grade who's now, to her distress, returned home.
Up at the top of the British Museum and quite hard to find, the Korean galleries are quiet and light-filled. Ceramics predominate and they are exquisite. I'd not appreciated the Korean love of simplicity over ornament before. It's very modern and very zen (well, Confucian, really) and wonderfully restrained.
This, for me, was the highlight: a simple large and rather irregular white pot with enormous character. Much more engaging than a perfect form. It had the added interest of being bought in Korea in 1935 by Bernard Leach, who admired and collected Korean ceramics before almost anyone else in the UK. He asked his fellow British potter Lucie Rie to look after it during the Second World War and felt that it sat so well in her studio that she should keep it. On her death, Rie left it to Janet Leach. The British Museum acquired it in 1999 from the Janet Leach estate.
The pot is a 17th or 18th century 'Moon' jar of the Choson dynasty (1392-1910). The accidents in its making are part of what we are supposed to appreciate, the BM website tells us. I wonder if that extends to accidents in finding it. I'm sure it does.