Dobrovits Aladár szerk.: Az Iparművészeti Múzeum Évkönyvei 5. (Budapest, 1962)

HOPP FERENC MÚZEUM - MUSÉE FERENC HOPP - Ferenczy, László: The Collection of Corean Industrial Art. A Gift of the Corean People's Democratic Republic

Fig. 8. Mother-of-pearl inlaid lacquer box On the embroideries of the I-period birds, flowers and other traditional motives were the most popular ones. Portraits and scenes of the daily life are now frequently added to the usual motives. A pair of Kasasaki birds on plum-branches and cranes on pine- branches represent the traditional themes in our collection. Another silk-embroidery (Swinging girls) is in connection with an old popular custom. Swinging was a preferred pastime principally of young girls. But besides this, according to popular belief, swings used to be fabricated on the fifth day of the fifth month in order to expel mosquitoes in the rainy period of the year. Three other embroideries represent Corean landscapes. Prominent of these is "Floats on the Yalu River" by Kim Myung Sook, member of the State's Handiwork Institute. Making of jewels is also a very old branch of industrial art with Coreans. There are still existing jewels of refined workmanship from the period of the Three Kingdoms. Girls of wealthy classes used to wear their jewels on their girdles. These were bound together with a lace of silk and thus formed a unit of jewels. In the collection we have such a jewel-unit embracing pieces of different ages. The coral enframed in a golden makara head and a jade box in pierced work are products of the eighteenth century. A jade prism in two parts is derived from the nineteenth century. Two butterflies of jade, decorated with enamelled wire and pearls of semi-precious stones are the oldest pieces, made in the seventeenth century (Fig. 7.). The whole collection was kept together with amber buttons and musk, preferred not only for its strong fragrancy but also as medicine. Among the jewels there are also two hairpins. One of them is made of a thick silver rod with a coral on its head. It is an eighteenth century work, or even earlier. Similar pins were used by the brides in their hairdresses in the I-period. Wealthy men also used to wear silver hairpins, but these were lighter than those of the women. Rich women and brides wore hairpins of gold or, chiefly in summer, of semi-precious stone. A jade hairpin of the collection, having a noble, simple shape is of the seventeenth or eighteenth century. Among the jewels we have also to mention amber buttons, silver rings decorated with enamel and luxurious silver buttons with enamelled decoration.