Dong-Hwa Huh
Date of birth
1926
Place of birth
Nationality
Biography
The Impassioned Collector
Dr. Huh Dong-Hwa (b.1926)
Collector, Artist, and Director of The Museum of Korean Embroidery
Unwrapping Pojagi: The Story of Wrapping Cloths
"어머니를 생각하며"
“Thinking of Mother”
그리운 고향 산천은 첩첩이 만봉으로 막히고
가고 싶은 마음은 꿈속에 끝없구나
한송정 정자가에 달빛만이 외로웠고
경포대 앞에서는 한바탕 바람 불었지
모래 위에 해오라기 모였다간 흩어지고
바다 멀리 물결타고 고깃배들 오며가며
언제 다시 임영길을 밟아 보고
어머니 곁에서 함께 비단옷 바느질하리
신사임당
Not long ago the pojagi was an endangered species in Korea. It was very nearly consigned to the same fate as that of the tiger and fox, which were driven from the peninsula during Korea’s extraordinary twentieth century experience of displacement, war, and extensive urbanization. The millennia-long vibrant threads of life that the lively pojagi carried through countless generations faced near extinction in the mid-twentieth century with the introduction of cotton, nylon, and other machine-made synthetic fabrics. Its high status as virtuous womanly craft and symbol of respect disappeared, instead becoming a symbol of ‘poor culture’ that contrasted with the materially rich culture of the West. The Korean woman’s needle, though made of steel, was too fragile to sew through the thick, hard wall of Westernisation and industrialisation. No one noticed its sudden disappearance. No one lamented its loss.
The pojagi, whose origin dates back to the prehistoric era, was once the most common object to be seen in Korean daily life. It wrapped everything from bed linen to elaborate bridal robes. It covered everything from food to sewing baskets. Traditional folk belief also played a role in the popularity of pojagi, as Koreans had long believed that pok (good luck, or happiness) could be preserved inside the wrapping cloths.
Women of the Chosôn Dynasty made the asymmetrical and flexible pojagi with leftover pieces of silk, hemp and ramie. As their clothes had elegant curves, there were always triangular pieces left over. Women never threw away these leftover scraps of material because wastefulness, whether it was a piece of fabric or a grain of rice, was not regarded as a virtue. So they found a way to utilize them in a very creative way. The pojagi, therefore, became an object of versatile functionality.
Having little contact with the outside world in the strictly gender-divided Confucian society of Chosôn, almost every woman, regardless of her social status, created the pojagi as the only means of expressing her hidden genius and suppressed artistic energy. Creating pojagi was her play and prayer at the same time. As they stitched and embroidered, numerous unknown women hoped and prayed for the happiness and longevity of their husbands, sons and daughters. Such unrestrained imaginative expression (sometimes abstract and sometimes figurative) reflects a free spirit, as their works were not intended to earn them fame or money. These women were playing as children might, for they were momentarily free from all social and familial restrictions and regulations while making pojagi. Embroidered ‘birds of love’ and ‘flowers of luck’ danced together on a colourful breeze of silk. The pojagi was a woman’s space in which to create her own utopia. Here all things of this world (sky, earth, human beings, animals, and plants) coexisted in natural harmony.
Now we witness the pojagi’s resurgence. It has broken a century-long silence with its vivid colours, poignant lines, and mysterious unspoken stories. More and more people, after a long period of interacting with mass-produced spiritless objects, are listening to its quietly wise stories. People have begun to study the philosophy behind these objects born of hardship and expressing the hope of so many anonymous Korean women.
Transcending the confines of time and space, these works of art could only have been born out of a pure and unconditional love for others. This is the abiding message the pojagi has at long last unwrapped for us.
Yujin Chung
Co-curator WRAPPED
Yu Jin Chung is an art historian who graduated with honours from The University of Auckland. Currently she works as an art educator at Waikato Museum.
Inspiration from Confinement: Chosôn Women’s Art of the Inner Chamber
In the early years of Korea’s last dynasty (Chosôn: 1392-1910) Neo-Confucianism was established as the official state ideology. A strong centralized bureaucracy used this ideology to legitimise its rule and regulate the social behaviour of the populace. Chosôn’s officially sanctioned social code was a rigidly moralistic and hierarchical one in which male patriarchy assumed unprecedented importance. Although male patriarchy was hardly new to the Korean experience, its utter dominance of the official, political and cultural discourse of the day created conditions in the home that enabled men to enjoy, at least in theory, virtual dominance over women.
One important feature of this hierarchical delineation of gender roles was the inner/outer (nae/oe) concept, or naeoebôp. Succinctly stated, the woman was charged with the everyday workings of the “inner” realm (the home), while the man was free to occupy the “outer” realm of work and play outside the home. It is from this situation that we have in modern Korea the still surviving and functional terms chip saram (house person, or wife), and pakkat yangban (outside yangban, or respected husband). The usage of these terms today, however, is well removed from the everyday practical realities of Chosôn society where the strict separation of gender activities prevailed.
The primary concern of the Chosôn woman was to be a good wife and mother, and to dutifully respect and serve her parents in law. In Chosôn times a woman was largely confined to the home in the expected performance of her many everyday household duties. These naturally included the preparation of food, cleaning, sewing, weaving, and of course the nurture and care of children. Depending on the status of the family, she might also be required to help in preparations for ancestor worship rituals (a vitally important preoccupation of socially elite families). In every task and duty performed she was expected to follow rules for proper comportment and behaviour set out in standard ethics textbooks that were often supplemented by ethics manuals composed in the home. Even when she had occasion to go outside the home she did so discreetly and in accordance with a Confucian ethical code that carefully regulated how such outings were to be conducted, including the covering of the face and even travel by palanquin to shield her from the gaze of men in public.
The naeoebôp principle mentioned above also informed the construction of the Chosôn home, which contained separate living quarters for men and women. The household implements used by men and women were distinctly separate as well.
The principal tools of the educated man at home were his writing brush and the accoutrements of paper, ink stick, and inkstone. Little else was required of a man trained from an early age to excel in the composition of Chinese poetry. Excellence in writing poetry was a fundamental requirement for success in the state civil service examination and subsequent appointment to a position as scholar-official in the government bureaucracy.
Women, of course, could never become scholar-officials, and thus had no perceived need to be educated as men were. Indeed, to be uneducated was considered a virtue for the Chosôn woman. She might have a limited knowledge of Chinese characters and (after the 15th century invention of the Korean phonetic writing system) be able to freely read and write in the Korean vernacular, but access to such limited reading and writing skills was made possible in large part to facilitate learning the rules of proper Confucian ethics and behaviour for women. A number of Chosôn women did acquire a masterful knowledge of the Chinese classics, along with abilities in poetic composition that rivalled anything produced by their male counterparts, but they were very much the exception. The overwhelming majority, whether from the elite or commoner classes, had very little to do with the writing brush so monopolized by men. It should also be mentioned here that women of the household were further discouraged from singing or playing musical instruments, as these activities were considered immodest and unbecoming. The acquisition of such skills was relegated to professional female entertainers (kisaeng) of the lowest social class.
If writing brush, paper, ink stick, and inkstone were the tools that symbolized the male domain in the Chosôn household, then surely the sewing needle, thread, scissors, measuring ruler, thimble, and two types of flatirons (tarimi and indu) were the tools that symbolized the female domain. These implements were commonly known as the “seven friends of the women’s quarters” (kyujung ch’il u).
Such sewing tools presented women with the one truly significant outlet by which to display their creative talents and freely exercise their self-expression. It is through sewing, particularly in the making of embroidery and wrapping cloths, that women found opportunities to momentarily transcend the many social constraints and mundane tasks that defined their daily existence. Embroidery of exquisite workmanship came to grace any number of household items, including folding screens, pillow coverings, socks (pôsôn), money pouches, spoon cases, and of course clothing.
Inventiveness in the making of wrapping cloths (pojagi) also came to be a highly valued artistic sewing craft. Chosôn women, ever mindful of their Confucian duty to be frugal, used leftover cloth to create wrappings of various sizes in which to carry or store assorted items. The patchwork quilts that evolved from such humble utilitarian beginnings are appreciated today, not just for their inspired pattern and colour arrangements but also as testimony to the feelings, sentiments, and emotions of so many anonymous women that would otherwise have remained completely unknown.
We cannot know with any certainty if the confinement and social constraints imposed on Chosôn women served to expedite the development of such high standards of manual dexterity and unique artistic sensibility. But, to paraphrase Shakespeare, there are many sweet uses of adversity, and Chosôn embroidery and wrapping cloth design appear to be two of them. How else could ordinary women with such limited exposure to the artistic aesthetics of the outside world have produced, especially in the patterns of the pojagi wrapping cloths, designs that resonate with the viewer of today as contemporary art? If nothing else, these wonderful cloth artefacts pay tribute to the resilience and adaptability of the human spirit.
Dr. Younghee Lee
Dr. Lee is the author of numerous publications on Korean literature and life in the Chosôn period. She is a Senior Lecturer in Korean at the School of Asian Studies, The University of Auckland, and the Director of the Korean Studies Centre of the New Zealand Asia Institute.
Endlessly accumulating, amassing, and stockpiling, the traits of a good collector usually include a healthy measure of eccentricity, considerable zeal, a keen eye, and a detailed knowledge of the sought after object. He or she must also have a place in which to store collected objects.
Dr. Huh Dong-Hwa is a man possessing all these traits which, when combined with his generously expressed qualities of love and warmth, make him a human treasure in his own right. The object of his passion is the humble Korean pojagi or wrapping cloth. Dr. Huh founded the Museum of Korean Embroidery, marking the beginning of a passionate affair with the history of anonymous Korean women’s handicraft. He and his wife, Dr. Park, have been instrumental in commencing research into the history of pojagi and the nameless women who created them.
Dr. Huh is an unusual proponent for the invisible women of Korea’s Chosôn Dynasty. His admiration for their uncelebrated genius was first made evident in 1978 when he was curator of the exhibition Five Hundred Years of Traditional Embroideries at the National Museum of Korea. The exhibition ignited the fires of national pride, celebrating the importance of pojagi as one of Korea’s national cultural assets, in much the same way weaving or raranga is in New Zealand.
Over the past thirty years, the pojagi in this exhibition have travelled to the United States, Germany, England, France, Italy, Belgium, Japan, and Australia. Now, for the first time, these pojagi have come to New Zealand.
With his belief in the ability of the pojagi to cross cultural barriers by their sheer beauty, Dr. Huh is convinced that unity can be achieved as our universally shared sense of aesthetic appreciation is invoked by viewing these handcrafted textiles. The birthplace of the pojagi comes from a place of enclosure and limitation for the traditional Korean seamstress. Dr. Huh calls pojagi the Chosôn woman’s “Field of Dreams”; a place where they have cultivated images and visual ideas with colour, line and thread, and imbued it with laughter, suffering, silence, and love.
Having spent much of his lifetime dedicated to the preservation of pojagi and historical objects, his ownart practice has attracted considerable attention as well. Utilising Korean proverbs and techniques, Dr. Huh has become a very successful sculptor through his inspired use of traditional Korean artefacts. As a collector, Dr. Huh has amassed hundreds of ancient traditional objects such as digging tools, window frames, garden forks and so on. His assemblages are both visually balanced and filled with joy, which comes from creating a new object from existing ones.
Korea’s long and rich history serves as a source of inspiration for Dr. Huh, whose research and fascination with the Chosôn period allows us to view a piece of Korean history through the remnants of Korean women’s creative practice - the humble and beautiful pojagi.
Leafa/Janice Wilson 2005
Co-curator WRAPPED
Leafa Wilson is Visual Arts Concept Leader at Waikato Museum.
Dr. Huh Dong-Hwa (b.1926)
Collector, Artist, and Director of The Museum of Korean Embroidery
Unwrapping Pojagi: The Story of Wrapping Cloths
"어머니를 생각하며"
“Thinking of Mother”
그리운 고향 산천은 첩첩이 만봉으로 막히고
가고 싶은 마음은 꿈속에 끝없구나
한송정 정자가에 달빛만이 외로웠고
경포대 앞에서는 한바탕 바람 불었지
모래 위에 해오라기 모였다간 흩어지고
바다 멀리 물결타고 고깃배들 오며가며
언제 다시 임영길을 밟아 보고
어머니 곁에서 함께 비단옷 바느질하리
신사임당
Not long ago the pojagi was an endangered species in Korea. It was very nearly consigned to the same fate as that of the tiger and fox, which were driven from the peninsula during Korea’s extraordinary twentieth century experience of displacement, war, and extensive urbanization. The millennia-long vibrant threads of life that the lively pojagi carried through countless generations faced near extinction in the mid-twentieth century with the introduction of cotton, nylon, and other machine-made synthetic fabrics. Its high status as virtuous womanly craft and symbol of respect disappeared, instead becoming a symbol of ‘poor culture’ that contrasted with the materially rich culture of the West. The Korean woman’s needle, though made of steel, was too fragile to sew through the thick, hard wall of Westernisation and industrialisation. No one noticed its sudden disappearance. No one lamented its loss.
The pojagi, whose origin dates back to the prehistoric era, was once the most common object to be seen in Korean daily life. It wrapped everything from bed linen to elaborate bridal robes. It covered everything from food to sewing baskets. Traditional folk belief also played a role in the popularity of pojagi, as Koreans had long believed that pok (good luck, or happiness) could be preserved inside the wrapping cloths.
Women of the Chosôn Dynasty made the asymmetrical and flexible pojagi with leftover pieces of silk, hemp and ramie. As their clothes had elegant curves, there were always triangular pieces left over. Women never threw away these leftover scraps of material because wastefulness, whether it was a piece of fabric or a grain of rice, was not regarded as a virtue. So they found a way to utilize them in a very creative way. The pojagi, therefore, became an object of versatile functionality.
Having little contact with the outside world in the strictly gender-divided Confucian society of Chosôn, almost every woman, regardless of her social status, created the pojagi as the only means of expressing her hidden genius and suppressed artistic energy. Creating pojagi was her play and prayer at the same time. As they stitched and embroidered, numerous unknown women hoped and prayed for the happiness and longevity of their husbands, sons and daughters. Such unrestrained imaginative expression (sometimes abstract and sometimes figurative) reflects a free spirit, as their works were not intended to earn them fame or money. These women were playing as children might, for they were momentarily free from all social and familial restrictions and regulations while making pojagi. Embroidered ‘birds of love’ and ‘flowers of luck’ danced together on a colourful breeze of silk. The pojagi was a woman’s space in which to create her own utopia. Here all things of this world (sky, earth, human beings, animals, and plants) coexisted in natural harmony.
Now we witness the pojagi’s resurgence. It has broken a century-long silence with its vivid colours, poignant lines, and mysterious unspoken stories. More and more people, after a long period of interacting with mass-produced spiritless objects, are listening to its quietly wise stories. People have begun to study the philosophy behind these objects born of hardship and expressing the hope of so many anonymous Korean women.
Transcending the confines of time and space, these works of art could only have been born out of a pure and unconditional love for others. This is the abiding message the pojagi has at long last unwrapped for us.
Yujin Chung
Co-curator WRAPPED
Yu Jin Chung is an art historian who graduated with honours from The University of Auckland. Currently she works as an art educator at Waikato Museum.
Inspiration from Confinement: Chosôn Women’s Art of the Inner Chamber
In the early years of Korea’s last dynasty (Chosôn: 1392-1910) Neo-Confucianism was established as the official state ideology. A strong centralized bureaucracy used this ideology to legitimise its rule and regulate the social behaviour of the populace. Chosôn’s officially sanctioned social code was a rigidly moralistic and hierarchical one in which male patriarchy assumed unprecedented importance. Although male patriarchy was hardly new to the Korean experience, its utter dominance of the official, political and cultural discourse of the day created conditions in the home that enabled men to enjoy, at least in theory, virtual dominance over women.
One important feature of this hierarchical delineation of gender roles was the inner/outer (nae/oe) concept, or naeoebôp. Succinctly stated, the woman was charged with the everyday workings of the “inner” realm (the home), while the man was free to occupy the “outer” realm of work and play outside the home. It is from this situation that we have in modern Korea the still surviving and functional terms chip saram (house person, or wife), and pakkat yangban (outside yangban, or respected husband). The usage of these terms today, however, is well removed from the everyday practical realities of Chosôn society where the strict separation of gender activities prevailed.
The primary concern of the Chosôn woman was to be a good wife and mother, and to dutifully respect and serve her parents in law. In Chosôn times a woman was largely confined to the home in the expected performance of her many everyday household duties. These naturally included the preparation of food, cleaning, sewing, weaving, and of course the nurture and care of children. Depending on the status of the family, she might also be required to help in preparations for ancestor worship rituals (a vitally important preoccupation of socially elite families). In every task and duty performed she was expected to follow rules for proper comportment and behaviour set out in standard ethics textbooks that were often supplemented by ethics manuals composed in the home. Even when she had occasion to go outside the home she did so discreetly and in accordance with a Confucian ethical code that carefully regulated how such outings were to be conducted, including the covering of the face and even travel by palanquin to shield her from the gaze of men in public.
The naeoebôp principle mentioned above also informed the construction of the Chosôn home, which contained separate living quarters for men and women. The household implements used by men and women were distinctly separate as well.
The principal tools of the educated man at home were his writing brush and the accoutrements of paper, ink stick, and inkstone. Little else was required of a man trained from an early age to excel in the composition of Chinese poetry. Excellence in writing poetry was a fundamental requirement for success in the state civil service examination and subsequent appointment to a position as scholar-official in the government bureaucracy.
Women, of course, could never become scholar-officials, and thus had no perceived need to be educated as men were. Indeed, to be uneducated was considered a virtue for the Chosôn woman. She might have a limited knowledge of Chinese characters and (after the 15th century invention of the Korean phonetic writing system) be able to freely read and write in the Korean vernacular, but access to such limited reading and writing skills was made possible in large part to facilitate learning the rules of proper Confucian ethics and behaviour for women. A number of Chosôn women did acquire a masterful knowledge of the Chinese classics, along with abilities in poetic composition that rivalled anything produced by their male counterparts, but they were very much the exception. The overwhelming majority, whether from the elite or commoner classes, had very little to do with the writing brush so monopolized by men. It should also be mentioned here that women of the household were further discouraged from singing or playing musical instruments, as these activities were considered immodest and unbecoming. The acquisition of such skills was relegated to professional female entertainers (kisaeng) of the lowest social class.
If writing brush, paper, ink stick, and inkstone were the tools that symbolized the male domain in the Chosôn household, then surely the sewing needle, thread, scissors, measuring ruler, thimble, and two types of flatirons (tarimi and indu) were the tools that symbolized the female domain. These implements were commonly known as the “seven friends of the women’s quarters” (kyujung ch’il u).
Such sewing tools presented women with the one truly significant outlet by which to display their creative talents and freely exercise their self-expression. It is through sewing, particularly in the making of embroidery and wrapping cloths, that women found opportunities to momentarily transcend the many social constraints and mundane tasks that defined their daily existence. Embroidery of exquisite workmanship came to grace any number of household items, including folding screens, pillow coverings, socks (pôsôn), money pouches, spoon cases, and of course clothing.
Inventiveness in the making of wrapping cloths (pojagi) also came to be a highly valued artistic sewing craft. Chosôn women, ever mindful of their Confucian duty to be frugal, used leftover cloth to create wrappings of various sizes in which to carry or store assorted items. The patchwork quilts that evolved from such humble utilitarian beginnings are appreciated today, not just for their inspired pattern and colour arrangements but also as testimony to the feelings, sentiments, and emotions of so many anonymous women that would otherwise have remained completely unknown.
We cannot know with any certainty if the confinement and social constraints imposed on Chosôn women served to expedite the development of such high standards of manual dexterity and unique artistic sensibility. But, to paraphrase Shakespeare, there are many sweet uses of adversity, and Chosôn embroidery and wrapping cloth design appear to be two of them. How else could ordinary women with such limited exposure to the artistic aesthetics of the outside world have produced, especially in the patterns of the pojagi wrapping cloths, designs that resonate with the viewer of today as contemporary art? If nothing else, these wonderful cloth artefacts pay tribute to the resilience and adaptability of the human spirit.
Dr. Younghee Lee
Dr. Lee is the author of numerous publications on Korean literature and life in the Chosôn period. She is a Senior Lecturer in Korean at the School of Asian Studies, The University of Auckland, and the Director of the Korean Studies Centre of the New Zealand Asia Institute.
Endlessly accumulating, amassing, and stockpiling, the traits of a good collector usually include a healthy measure of eccentricity, considerable zeal, a keen eye, and a detailed knowledge of the sought after object. He or she must also have a place in which to store collected objects.
Dr. Huh Dong-Hwa is a man possessing all these traits which, when combined with his generously expressed qualities of love and warmth, make him a human treasure in his own right. The object of his passion is the humble Korean pojagi or wrapping cloth. Dr. Huh founded the Museum of Korean Embroidery, marking the beginning of a passionate affair with the history of anonymous Korean women’s handicraft. He and his wife, Dr. Park, have been instrumental in commencing research into the history of pojagi and the nameless women who created them.
Dr. Huh is an unusual proponent for the invisible women of Korea’s Chosôn Dynasty. His admiration for their uncelebrated genius was first made evident in 1978 when he was curator of the exhibition Five Hundred Years of Traditional Embroideries at the National Museum of Korea. The exhibition ignited the fires of national pride, celebrating the importance of pojagi as one of Korea’s national cultural assets, in much the same way weaving or raranga is in New Zealand.
Over the past thirty years, the pojagi in this exhibition have travelled to the United States, Germany, England, France, Italy, Belgium, Japan, and Australia. Now, for the first time, these pojagi have come to New Zealand.
With his belief in the ability of the pojagi to cross cultural barriers by their sheer beauty, Dr. Huh is convinced that unity can be achieved as our universally shared sense of aesthetic appreciation is invoked by viewing these handcrafted textiles. The birthplace of the pojagi comes from a place of enclosure and limitation for the traditional Korean seamstress. Dr. Huh calls pojagi the Chosôn woman’s “Field of Dreams”; a place where they have cultivated images and visual ideas with colour, line and thread, and imbued it with laughter, suffering, silence, and love.
Having spent much of his lifetime dedicated to the preservation of pojagi and historical objects, his ownart practice has attracted considerable attention as well. Utilising Korean proverbs and techniques, Dr. Huh has become a very successful sculptor through his inspired use of traditional Korean artefacts. As a collector, Dr. Huh has amassed hundreds of ancient traditional objects such as digging tools, window frames, garden forks and so on. His assemblages are both visually balanced and filled with joy, which comes from creating a new object from existing ones.
Korea’s long and rich history serves as a source of inspiration for Dr. Huh, whose research and fascination with the Chosôn period allows us to view a piece of Korean history through the remnants of Korean women’s creative practice - the humble and beautiful pojagi.
Leafa/Janice Wilson 2005
Co-curator WRAPPED
Leafa Wilson is Visual Arts Concept Leader at Waikato Museum.
