Skip to main content

Hansangsoo Embroidery museum .... a great find

During my visit to Korea in March I visited the Hansangsoo Embroidery Museum located in Bukchon Hanok Village in Gahoe-dong in Seoul. 

While rapid development in Korea has replaced  much of the old with new, Bukchon Hanok Village   is an area dedicated to preserving Korean traditional houses called ‘hanok’.


Bukchon Hanok  Village is nestled between the two royal palaces, Gyeongbokgung Palace and Changdeokgung Palace.  Many of the little museums that line the narrow streets are  opportunities for visitors to have cultural immersion experiences which include folk painting and doing different  tile rubbings.

The Embroidery Museum has many exhibits of  traditional embroidery including the works of Han Sang-soo, who has been named Intangible Cultural Asset No. 80. It was established to promote Korean embroidery as well as artwork, and to preserve the traditional techniques handed down from generation to generation, in a hope of encouraging a new generation of creations.

The Museum in its traditional setting was small but it did have some amazing pieces  and I was blown away by  seeing the fine handiwork on display. 


But as this blog is about Hanji I really want to tell you about another amazing find that I made that day. 

Sitting outside in the courtyard waiting for my friends to arrive I saw a piece of furniture, that was partially exposed to the elements. It was surrounded by old water bottles and boxes and it'd obviously been there for a very long time. It was dusty and the decorations were peeling off but upon closer inspection I realised that it was a piece of Hanji !! I suspect that the base was wooden but the decorations were definitely done in hanji paper. I have so many questions that I'd love to ask about it.  

How old is it? Who made it? Has it lived somewhere else before finding a home at the museum?  Has it always lived in this traditional home? Why is it not now loved?

It seems such a shame that such a lovely work of art is not being looked after, but if my questions could be answered, then I'm sure I'd understand more. At this point in time I don't know how to get those answers but in the meantime I can just wonder and appreciate the artwork that was.

I'm sure there are many more pieces like this all over Korea where a piece of furniture has been lovingly created in the past, but now, they're out of fashion and  a more modern and  practical replacement has been found. Which leads me to ponder what the future holds for this art form unless we encourage it's use both in Korea and abroad.






Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Lotus symbol in Korean culture .....

In traditional Korean Hanji art you can see many different designs of plants, animals, letters and insects. I'm sure you've wondered what they all symbolise as they are repeated so often and in many different ways.  In this post I just want to take a brief look at the lotus plant and what it symbolises for the Korean people. I've used this design on a few articles but I never really knew the full meaning of what it represented until I started doing some research for my book.  Even though many of us aren't Korean we can still use these designs and in so doing, translate a deeper meaning to our articles. Here are a just a few of my favourites from the easiest to the more difficult to cut out.                         The lotus flower symbolises creation, birth, liveability and reproduction and therefore it's one of the most  important symbols in both Korean culture a...
3 comments
Read more

The Buddhist symbol, Hanji & Korean culture ....

When selecting designs for my Hanji pieces I tend to make stylistic choices as to what will look best on each piece but the Korean designs all have very deep symbolic meanings.  None more than the Buddhist swastika (manja) design. ‘Manja’ (만, Man is “卍” and 만자, Manja literally means “letter Man”) is also called Srivatsalksana in Sanskrit.  It is one of the thirty-two (32) marks of excellence of the Buddha and is said to exist on his hands, feet, hair and waist.                         For those of us in the West this is often confused with the German Nazi swastika symbol but in fact it's been  around for about three thousand years.  The swastika is an equilateral cross with arms bent at right angles and all in the same direction, usually to the right, or clockwise. It's a symbol of prosperity and good fortune and it originally represented the revolving sun, fire, or life. The word swastik...
Post a Comment
Read more

HANJI TRIVIA - Punjabi 'Hanji' .......

When researching about Hanji I've come across many sites that relate to the word 'hanji' being used in Punjabi, one of the Indian languages.  There's a band called 'Cornershop' that  made a CD in 1997 called, "When I was Born for the Seventh Time' and at the beginning of the song, which I believe was originally sung in Punjabi, they use the word Hanji.   In Punjabi both 'han' and 'ji' mean yes. When talking informally to a person they use 'han' but if speaking to an elder or a person with a superior status then they put the two words together and say 'hanji'.  You just never know when this word might be used ......
Post a Comment
Read more