Beomeosa Temple Embroidered Subongmun Gate Folding Screen

Subongmun (壽福文, "longevity and good fortune characters") is a form of votive text wishing great fortune and long life on a child's first birthday or a parent's sixtieth birthday, in which the characters su (壽, longevity) and bok (福, fortune) are each written in a hundred varied and transformed forms of seal script (jeonseo); embroidered folding screens were made based on such texts, forming a kind of prayer composition. The characters are not written in pure seal script but are stylised into decorative forms, or broken down and recombined. Surviving examples of such screens include the Baeksubaekbokdo (Hundred Longevity, Hundred Fortune Painting) written by Widang Kim Mun-je, as well as the Subongmunjado Screen and the Baeksubaekbokdosu Screen held by the National Folk Museum of Korea. The Beomeosa Temple screen appears to have been made by a palace woman devoted to Buddhism in the late Joseon period and offered to Beomeosa Temple as a prayer for good fortune. Although the embroidery technique is not especially refined, each character is worked in a different shade, using naturally dyed silk thread in at least eight colours — green, blue, purple, indigo, yellow, red, black and white. This piece closely resembles the Baeksubaekbokdosu Screen in the National Folk Museum of Korea and is judged to have been made from the same model, but it contains a total of 440 characters, a far greater variety. It is a heritage item notable for the design of its characters and the refinement of its embroidery.

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Where it is

Region

Geumjeong-gu, Busan

Designation

Cultural Heritage Material · 문화유산자료