Hanji cabinet ....... a surprise inside ?

Work with my students is well underway for the construction of their Korean Hanji cabinet but an interesting event happened last night when one of them turned up for class with her cabinet sealed and ready to cut out the door.

Here's a little bit of insight into a project like this: when constructing a piece of furniture out of cardboard its important to ensure that the design enables it to be sturdy enough to put things into, and place things on top of, the finished article. All surfaces needed to be cut out of a double thickness of cardboard, which were then glued together to give a total thickness of 6 mm. This made working with it quite difficult at times as it was that much harder to cut out and it required a lot more patience and muscle power to complete the job. Once the job of cutting it out and putting it all together was done then the doors are to be cut out and later they will be refitted back into the cabinet.

This process has taken a couple of weeks of hard work and effort and one of my students came to class last night all very excited that it was coming together so nicely BUT she had sealed the top onto the cabinet and thought that she may have left some things inside.

Take a look at this video to see her surprise after cutting out her door (which took about an hour of hard work) .....

I'm not sure if she was more relieved that the cutting had finished or that she'd found what she was looking for. Classes can be fun and the cabinet is looking great ....

Comments

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 and its traditional religions. In both Confucianism and Buddhism

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 swastika is derived from the Sanskrit swastika which means, "conducive to well

Online Hanji paper store, in English .....

I'm really pleased to be able to share with you this website where you can order a variety of Hanji papers from Korea and it's all in English !!! The store is based in Daejon, Korea. HAMINBRIDGE ( Thehanji ) was established by Moonyang Park in 1983. It's a family owned 2nd generation business and they have a factory in Junju. They also have a factory in China where some of the paper is made. The website is at www. thehanji.com and it provides a selection of specialty Hanji paper (Korean paper) and products. I ordered some papers from them recently to see what it was like and they were extremely efficient in dealing with the order and it was here in the UAE within 5 days so I was really impressed. The prices were good and they even have some on special, the paper is beautiful and the ease of ordering was amazing. They do sell rolls of paper, traditional papers and lanterns but overall I did think the range was a bit limited for what I wa

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