Heirpetal Journal

If you have bought a squat, tomato-shaped Fuyu persimmon this fall, you have tasted one of Korea's favorite autumn fruits. In Korean it is simply gam (감). And in late autumn, a Korean persimmon tree is one of the most striking sights in the countryside: bare branches, almost no leaves, and bright orange fruit hanging in the cold air. A fruit that ripens after the leaves fall That picture is not just poetic license. The Asian persimmon tree ripens its fruit when the leaves have mostly fallen, usually in October and November, which is also the main harvest season across East Asia. So the classic image of late autumn in Korea is a tree that looks almost winter-bare, still lit up with fruit. There are two broad kinds. Astringent persimmons, such as Hachiya, are only pleasant once they turn soft and jelly-like. Non-astringent ones, such as Fuyu, can be eaten while still firm, like an apple. In Korea persimmons are served as a dessert or set out when guests come over, cut into s...

At the end of winter, before anything else in the garden wakes up, a bare plum branch puts out its first flowers. There may still be snow on the ground. For centuries, Korean painters and poets treated that small moment as one of the most meaningful sights of the year. The first flower in the cold The plum, maehwa (매화) in Korean, blooms while snow and ice are still around. Across East Asia that made it a symbol of purity and resilience: a flower that does not wait for easy weather. Together with the pine and the bamboo, which stay green through the cold, it belongs to the "Three Friends of Winter." One of the Four Gentlemen The plum is also one of the sagunja (사군자), the "Four Gentlemen": plum, orchid, chrysanthemum and bamboo. Each plant stood for qualities admired in the ideal Confucian scholar, such as uprightness, purity and perseverance under hard conditions. All four became favorite subjects of literati ink painting, because a branch, a leaf or a st...

In Korean art, a crane is rarely just a bird. It stands for a long life, a clean mind and a message from somewhere higher. You find it on palace screens, on the chests of court officials and, every winter, in the rice fields near the border, where real cranes still arrive by the hundreds. One of the ten symbols of long life Korea has a set of images called sipjangsaeng (십장생), the ten symbols of longevity. The most common list is the sun, clouds, mountains, water, rocks, pine trees, deer, cranes, turtles and the mushroom of immortality, called bulrocho or yeongji . Lists vary a little; some swap in bamboo or peaches. Painted together on large folding screens, these ten things made a whole landscape of wishes for health and long years. Within that set, the crane has a special place. It was thought to live for a very long time, and it was often described as a messenger between heaven and earth, which is why it is usually shown flying through clouds or standing near pine trees an...

Most paintings try to fill the page. Korean ink painting often does the opposite. A mountain is a few dark strokes, the mist around it is bare paper, and the painter stops long before the surface is covered. What is left out matters as much as what is painted in. One stick of ink, many shades Ink painting in Korea is called sumukhwa (수묵화), "water and ink painting," and its main material is very simple. The ink, meok (먹), is a solid stick made from soot, traditionally from burned pine, bound with animal glue, pressed into a mold and dried slowly. To use it, the painter grinds the stick against an inkstone with a little water. Brush, ink, paper and inkstone were the four essentials of a scholar's room, known in Korea as munbang sau , the "four friends of the study." With nothing but black ink and water, the range has to come from tone. Add more water and a stroke turns soft grey; load the brush with ink and it turns deep, glossy black; let the brush run ...

A small art print makes a good gift when it says something. In Korean art most motifs already do: the tiger guards a home, the carp climbs toward success, the peony wishes wealth and honor. Here is a short guide to choosing a print by what you want to wish someone, plus a few practical notes on timing and format. Choose by the wish A new home: the tiger. In Korean folk painting the tiger kept misfortune away, and tiger pictures were hung at the New Year for exactly that reason. Our ink tiger is a calm guardian for an entryway or a first apartment. ( The story behind it ) A graduate, a new job or a big exam: the carp. The carp that leaps the Dragon Gate becomes a dragon, and the image has long stood for passing the exam and getting ahead. Our two ink carp swim upstream together. ( The story behind it ) A wedding or an anniversary: the peony. The king of flowers stands for wealth and honor, and peony screens stood behind Joseon royal weddings. ( The story behind it ) Paren...

There is an old story about a fish that refuses to stay where it was born. Every year, it is said, carp swim up the Yellow River against the current until they reach a roaring stretch of rapids called the Dragon Gate. Most are swept back. The few that leap the falls are transformed into dragons. From a river legend to an exam The legend comes from China, where the Dragon Gate was tied to the mythical flood-tamer Yu, and it soon became a picture of one particular kind of success: passing the imperial civil service examinations. Those exams were famously hard, and passing them meant an official post and prestige for a family for generations. A carp jumping the falls became the standard image for a student who finally made it. Korea chose its officials by examination too. Under the Joseon dynasty the state exam was called gwageo , and the story came along with it. Korean still has an everyday word from it, deungyongmun (등용문), "climbing the dragon gate." It originally me...

Look up under the eaves of almost any Korean palace or Buddhist temple and the wood is not wood-colored. Every beam, bracket and rafter end is painted in bands of green and blue, red and ochre, outlined in white and black. That painting has a name, dancheong (단청), and it was never only decoration. Paint as protection Traditional Korean buildings are timber frames, and timber does not like rain, damp summers or freezing winters. Dancheong is made from mineral pigments mixed with animal glue and brushed over the wood, where it acts as a protective skin against moisture and decay and softens the effect of heat and cold. Some accounts add that it helps keep insects away. Painters renew it as it fades, which is why a freshly restored hall can look startlingly bright. Five colors, five directions The palette is built on obangsaek (오방색), the five directional colors: blue for the east, red for the south, white for the west, black for the north and yellow for the center. They come f...

It is a white jar, a little lopsided, with no painted decoration at all. It may be the most admired object in Korean art. The moon jar, dalhangari (달항아리), has hung in paintings, sold at auction for millions and been copied by potters around the world. Most of its charm comes from the things a perfectionist would call flaws. Two halves of one moon Moon jars are Joseon white porcelain, made mostly from the later 17th century through the 18th. Their size was the problem: a jar that large is hard to throw in one piece on a potter's wheel. So potters shaped the upper and lower halves as two separate bowls and joined them at the rim. The seam usually shows as a faint band around the middle, and the two halves rarely line up perfectly. In the kiln the jar slumps a little, the glaze pools and crazes, and the white comes out warm or milky or faintly blue. The result is never a perfect sphere. That is the point. A moon jar looks less manufactured than grown, which may be why it feel...