Embroidered Chaekgeo-ri Folding Screen

The Embroidered Chaekgeo-ri Folding Screen, held by Pusan National University Museum, is an eight-panel folding screen made in traditional embroidery on silk, based on a chaekgeori painting - a genre showing books together with stationery, ceramics, ancient bronzes and small fruits arranged in rows without any background. On each panel the embroidery follows an underdrawing in which books and various objects are set out in tiers, with no bookshelf shown, and the whole is mounted (janghwang - backed with silk or thick paper to finish a work as a book, album or hanging scroll) as an eight-panel screen. Except for the eighth panel, books are stacked in several layers at the top of each panel, with a variety of objects arranged below: antique bronzes, coloured glazed ceramics, scroll paintings and other antiquities, brush holders, brushes and inkstones and other stationery, narcissus flowers, peacock feathers, Buddha's-hand citrons and ruyi sceptres - luxury items chosen mainly for their auspicious meaning or decorative value. The arrangement varies slightly from panel to panel but is everywhere meticulous, and although the piece is entirely embroidered, each object is rendered with considerable realism; subdued, non-primary coloured threads are used with great care throughout, giving the work a beautiful palette. The screen's themes - diligence in study, worldly success, wealth, the flourishing of descendants, and health and long life - metaphorically express, through the various objects depicted, the aspirations of people from their teens to their eighties. Given the extremely fine and realistic rendering of the objects, their accurate and well-proportioned forms, the use of shading and perspective, and a palette dominated by elegant, subdued tones rather than strong primary colours, the underdrawing is presumed to have been made by a highly skilled painter of the royal Bureau of Painting (Dohwaseo), with the embroidery itself carried out as royal embroidery (gungsu) in the court's embroidery workshop (Subang). Judging from its subject matter, it is also thought to have been used in a palace duty office such as the Hongmungwan (Office of Special Advisers), the Dokseodang (royal reading hall) or the Gyujanggak (royal library), or else to have been bestowed by the king (naesapum) for use in the men's reception quarters (sarangchae) of a yangban household. This estimate of where and when it was made has become clearer through backing paper - government documents dating from the reigns of King Jeongjo and Emperor Gojong - discovered during full disassembly, repair and conservation treatment in 2017. The Embroidered Chaekgeo-ri Folding Screen held by Pusan National University Museum is presumed to have been produced in the court's Dohwaseo and Subang sometime after the eighteenth century. The composition of its chaekgado (books-and-scholarly-objects painting) content is excellent, its embroidery techniques are varied, and the dyeing of the silk thread used is of a very high standard. Moreover, having been made from an embroidery pattern (subon), it is refined and free of superfluous detail, and each of the eight panels carries its own meaning, giving the work very high heritage value.

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Where it is

Region

Geumjeong-gu, Busan

Designation

Provincial Tangible Heritage · 시도유형문화유산