• Journal of Conservation Science
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• v.36 no.6
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• pp.578-590
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• 2020

During the 1960-1970s, a group of ceramic conservation scientists and ceramic historians in South Korea came together and established their own disciplines. While the two disciplines share the same ceramics as the subjects of their research, there has been little interaction between the two as their research outputs are articulated in remarkably different languages. This paper aims to address the following questions by using a case study that focuses on the research on white porcelains centered on the project of Gyeonggi Museum and a series of studies conducted by one of the museum's project research teams. First, what are the characteristics of and differences between the explanation styles of the two disciplines that share the same research subjects of ceramics? Second, why has the communication between the two disciplines become difficult? Third, if there can be a trading zone wherein the two disciplines would be able to communicate again, what would be its epistemic conditions? The focus of this paper is the relationship between scientific data and ordinary language, which the two disciplines have shared from their inception. By analyzing the relationship, I first argue that, as the analytical techniques of conservation science have become more developed, conservation science's data have gradually lost its relevance in ceramic history, in spite of a shared common language between them; Second, I argue that by recovering the import of shared language again, the scientific data can be placed in a different practical context, providing novel interpretations that are relevant and often consequential to ceramic history.