Pap, Korea, paintings and drawings. Scroll, blue silk satin with yellow embroidered decoration and inscriptions, Korea, Choson dynasty, 1800-1900

Blue silk satin scroll embroidered with yellow design depicting four archaic Chinese bronzes and inscriptions. Each vessel has a short inscription running vertically down either side. The one on the right side gives the name of the vessel while that on the left transcribes the name into ancient Chinese characters. There is a longer explanatory inscription beneath each bronze. The design is copied from a book of Chinese woodblock prints dealing with antiquarianism.
All the vessels and the inscriptions are worked in yellow twisted silk thread which appears golden against the 5-end satin weave blue ground. Long, angled float stitches have been used for the characters while straight stitch, satin stitch and stem stitch have been used for the vessels. On the vessels, the embroidery threads are sometimes used in single lines and sometimes used side by side to give a more 'filled-in' appearance.
The scroll is mounted in two borders of elaborate geometric patterned silk, the wider border in pale blue, the narrower in orange. The borders are decorated with interlinking octagons, with squares and floral motifs. The scroll has a paper backing and is rolled onto a wooden roller.
Colour: Blue, yellow

Purchased. Registered File number 1984/1187.

This blue and gold scroll was probably embroidered by a Korean woman to decorate her home. Women in Korea were traditionally confined to the female quarters of the home and spent much of their time tailoring and embroidering clothes for their family.

The decoration of the scroll reflects the high regard in which classical Chinese culture was held by Korea’s elite. Depictions of four archaic Chinese bronzes – a bell and three different wine containers – dominate the scroll and are interspersed with inscriptions in ancient Chinese script. These were copied exactly from printed collections of examples of such bronzes, which were popular among the intelligentsia. One of the Chinese characters has been sewn in reverse, suggesting that it was copied from an erroneous text.

FE.25-1984