Our people’s main staple food is boiled rice.
So they made efforts to cook the boiled rice deliciously.
The good boiled rice cooking technology was spreaded to the neighboring countries long time ago.
Regarding this technology, the Chinese people under the Ch’ing dynasty told as follows: “Korean people cook the boiled rice well.
The grains of rice are smooth, soft, fragrant and greasy”.
The habit of eating the rice as the staple was established in the ancient time and so our people regarded even rice bowls as valuable.
Every member of family had its individual rice bowl, noodle one, spoon and chopsticks.
The parents prepared the bowl when their child became 1 year old.
In this case, they did the brass rice bowl for the boy and load bowl for the girl.
In the morning of the first anniversary of their baby’s birthday, the parents cooked the boiled rice with the white rice sincerely and seaweed soup for baby’s breakfast and gave them to the baby with the spoon and chopsticks.
The bowls, spoon and chopsticks for the first anniversary were used until 5-9 years old and then were exchanged with the big ones.
The bowls were also the essential ones for the marriage ceremony.
The bride prepared a set of tools for a table including the bowls, spoons and chopsticks for her and her husband.
When getting married, the bride went to her husband’s home with the glutinous rice in the bridegroom’s bowl, and the red bean in her bowl.
She wrapped such bowls with the kerchief.
Her husband’s parents prepared supper for the bride and bridegroom with this glutinous rice and red bean.
This reflected their aspiration for the eternal happy life of their son and wife.
The bowls which the bride brought were kept carefully forever even after her sons and daughters grew up to be adults.
Such custom has been inherited so far.
Our bowls have their covers, whose feature is the round shape and protruding upper part in order that the rice is not suppressed.
The quantity of rice in the cover was the same as that of rice for a bowl of boiled rice. So the cover was used as the measuring tool to measure the quantity of rice for a meal.
After filling the bowl with the boiled rice, our people covered the bowl with the covering or kept the bowl in the iron pot or kept the brass bowl on the warmest part of an ondol floor with the cover on and covered it with the covering. Since the covering had the cotton between two cloths, it could keep it warm.
Our women appointed the individual bowls for every member of family and piled them up on the self.
The villagers had good words for the housewife who kept the bowls clean on the shelf.