Historic Korean Craftsmanship
Explores the historic crafts of Korea.
Location: North Korea; South Korea
Craftsmen in Korean Society
Despite their essential services, craftsmen held a relatively low status in traditional Korean society. While more respectable than merchants, they ranked below the scholars and farmers. Their position reflected Buddhist and Confucian beliefs that craftsmen were divorced from nature. Butchers and leather-workers were thought to be especially unclean. During the Joseon period, craftsmen needed special licenses to operate. Their positions were typically inherited, and most peasant families crafted their own tools and clothing. Despite their low status, the artisans of Korea have fueled its military, built its cities, and produced some of its most beautiful works of art to the modern day.[1][2]
Korean Metalworking
Bronze working arrived in Korea through China around 1000 BCE. Widespread iron usage came much later, appearing before 200 BCE. As iron tools and weaponry grew more common, they revolutionized early Korean society. Improved crop yields led to expanding populations. Warlords, now armed with iron swords, carved out greater spheres of influence for themselves. Villages combined forces into small kingdoms, setting the stage for the dynasties of the Three Kingdoms period.
These early Korean smiths were skilled and prolific metalworkers. For almost the entirety of the Joseon dynasty, however, access to metal was limited. The Chinese Ming dynasty demanded regular tributes of gold and other metals. Korea, a rural and Confucian society, valued agriculture over industry. Confucian ancestor rites called for gold and silver, which was mostly reserved for official use. Bronze, meanwhile, went to the military.[3][4] Joseon craftsmen adapted by mastering new styles of ceramics, woodcarving, textiles, and paper-making.[5]
Korean Ceramics
One thousand years before the first blacksmiths of Korea, its people learned to make and decorate pottery. Simpler earthenware has been found from as much as 8000 years ago. Specimens from Jeju Island are even older at 10,000 years old. The art quickly emerged as the major craft of Korea. Craftsmen of the Goryeo dynasty specialized in celadon glazes. Their jade-coloured wares were part of a bustling ceramic trade in the 11th century. Prior to glazing an item, potters scratched images and patterns into its surface and packed them with white clay.[6][7]
The Joseon Dynasty mastered the mass-production of buncheong pottery. Potters signed every piece they made for quality control. State-sponsored kilns met rigid quality standards under regular oversight. The kilns in 15th-century Kwangju reportedly moved every ten years or so, after their workers had chopped down surrounding forests. Around this time, plain gray ceramics, or buncheong, came into fashion among the upper classes. Peasants purchased imported Chinese ceramics or lower-quality Korean wares.[5]
Papermaking and Printing in Korea
Paper, or hanji, served a number of purposes in Korean culture. Typical hanji was made from the inner bark of the mulberry tree through a 1,600 year-old process. The strong, light paper first gained popularity in the Silla Kingdom. Buddhist scholars copied sacred texts with wood-block printing. Confucian officials in the Goryeo and Joseon dynasties then used it to record countless official documents and histories. Families papered their doors and windows for insulation and made paper lanterns and kites. Strips of the waterproof material could be woven together to make baskets, fabric, and even armor. Hanji is still manufactured and used in Korea today.[8]
Bibliography
Michael J. Seth, A History of Korea: From Antiquity to the Present (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2011), 57.
Michael J. Pettid, Korean Cuisine: An Illustrated History (London: Reaktion Books, 2008), 16-17.
Brian Cumings, Korea's Place in the Sun: A Modern History (Updated) (New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company, 2005), 25-26.
Seth, 201-202.
Soyoung Lee and Jeon Seung-chang, Korean Buncheong Ceramics from Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art ;Yale University Press, 2011), 8-20.
Nigel Wood, "The Technology of Korean Celadon Wares" in Korean Art from the Gompertz and Other Collections in the Fitzwilliam Museum, ed. Yong-I Yun and Regina Krahl (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 12-25.
Frank Brinkley, Japan: Its History, Arts and Literature (London: T.C. & E.C. Jack, 1904), 42-48.
Soyoung Lee and Seung-Chang Jeon, Korean Buncheong Ceramics from Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art (New York, NY: Metropolitan Museum of Art ;Yale University Press, 2011).
K. E. Lee, "Korean Traditional Fashion Inspires the Global Runway" in Ethnic Fashion, ed. Miguel Ángel Gardetti and Subramanian Senthilkannan Muthu (Singapore: Springer, 2016), 56-59.
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