Korean Art, Craft & Culture books .....

During my recent stay in Korea I found a few books on Korean Crafts, Arts and Culture in English that I'd like to share with you.

The first one is 'Treasures from Korea, Arts and Culture of the Joseon Dynasty, 1392 - 1910'.

This book was produced to coincide with an exhibition of the same name which started at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, in the US in March 2014 and ended up at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston in January of this year.

It isn't about Hanji but it does give a good insight into the life and times of this era and I was especially interested in the paintings that are often incorporated into Hanji pieces.

Here's an example:

'Tiger under a pine tree' printed onto Hanji paper

Tiger under a pine tree used on a Hanji lamp

Next is 'Korean Handicrafts - Art in Everyday life' which is jointly published by the Korea Foundation and Seoul Selection to give international readers a basic understanding of Korean Arts and Culture. It's a small book, No. 20 in a series entitled, Korea Essentials. It has some good links to Craft Related Organisations in Korea including the Korea Craft and Design Organisation (KCDF) which is a public institution of the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism.

Lastly I was very excited when Ifound a book called, '100 Thimbles in a box - The Spirit and Beauty of Korean Handicrafts' by Debbie Kent and Joan Suwalsky. The authors are both Korean adoptee parents and there wish was for this book to be a resource, for people around the world, on Korea's unique handicrafts and for Koreans, as a reminder of their rich heritage.

This is one of the most beautifully produced books I've seen for a long time, the photography is stunning, the colours are rich and the pages just jump out at you urging you to turn to the next page to discover something new.

There's a lovely section on Hanji paper and its uses and lots of references to Hanji throughout the book.

I'll add these to my ever growing collection of books and I've got lots of reading to get on with now as I treasure my new finds.

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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