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| "Aechun's Garden" calendar designed by Kim Min-ji / Courtesy of Cultural Foundation of National Museum of Korea |
By Kwon Mee-yoo
With 2021 just around the corner, a variety of calendars for next year are on sale. One of the big hits is "Aechun's Garden," a wall calendar being sold at the National Museum Shop featuring flowers and plants from Joseon-era literati painter Shin Myeong-yeon (1809-86) whose artistic name was Aechun.
Each page of the calendar features different flowers on a paper frame with the remaining part cut out. When layered, the flowers create the scenery of a lush garden and the shape of the garden changes monthly as pages are flipped. The unconventional use of traditional painting received a positive response on social media, resulting in huge sales of the calendar.
The Cultural Foundation of National Museum of Korea which operates the museum shop said the first batch was sold out in about 90 minutes in mid-December and it has been restocked three times, but is again completely sold out at the moment.
The calendar was one of the winners of the foundation's competition for cultural product design using the state-run museum's major artifacts.
Kim Min-ji, a graduate student of Visual Communication Design at Yonsei University who created the delicate calendar, said she didn't expect its tremendous popularity.
"I was just excited to win the competition and supply my calendar to the museum shop. I thought the initial batch I contracted with the museum would be on sale throughout next year. I didn't expect it to sell out so fast and be reordered three times," Kim said during a phone interview with The Korea Times.
"I have been interested in traditional cultural products and considering this as my future research topic. When I saw the notice for the product design competition hosted by the museum's foundation, I thought I might give it a shot."
Kim picked the 19th century painter's collection of "Painting of Landscape and Flowers" since it was the only relic on the list with flowers. The paintings feature a variety of natural flora such as roses, poppies, plantain lilies, bleeding hearts and pear blossoms, with butterflies and white swallows.
"Due to COVID-19, it was difficult for people to go out and enjoy flowers. So I thought it would be nice to bring flowery elements to the home or office," she said.
While browsing museum stores for market research, Kim thought there could be more possibilities in traditional cultural product design besides just reproducing the original image onto a certain object.
"I thought of ways to make use of multiple paintings in the album, while making each element vivid and alive," Kim said. "It was not easy to place each month's flower, making sure each was easily seen, yet creating different imagery every month. It was also difficult to find the right factory to produce the calendar with many cutouts."
Kim believes that a well-made cultural product could raise interest in history and tradition.
"My fondness for history met my design major, leading me to design cultural products. I hope my work will bring history and cultural properties a step closer to the public," she said. "Though this year's Aechun's Garden is sold out, I am planning to explore more possibilities such as designing a desk calendar or featuring works of other artists who also left collections of paintings."
