'Unsold lacquerware are work of art'

Chung Su-wha, the nation’s foremost “chiljang” or master of lacquer paint and painting, poses in this file photo with works he created and are now stored at his workshop in Suyuri, northeastern Seoul. / Courtesy of Chung Su-wha

Working with lacquer sap to create art: Chung Su-wha

By Kim Ji-soo

Only the clear autumn sky and the peak of Mt. Bukhan accent Chung Su-wha’s lacquer paint workshop in northern Seoul. The 20-year-old workshop, known as Jangan Chilgi, sits humbly in Suyuri northeastern Seoul and is all business.

Chung, 60, the nation’s foremost “chiljang” or master of lacquer paint and painting, waved to the reporter. The workshop, which looks like it had been converted from a residential space, has a large, main open space where for the past several decades, Chung’s students either sand wash wooden frames for small Korean small tables or large Korean folding screens; a small corner room for storing valuable lacquer tree sap; and an another small corner space where he performs lacquer painting.

Chung extracts sap from lacquer trees, turns the sap into paint in the Korean traditional way and applies the lacquer paint on furniture and other products.

Chung Su-wha puts on initial layers of lacquer he distilled at his workshop Tuesday, in northeastern Seoul. / Korea Times photo by Kim Ji-soo

The soft-spoken Chung is an interesting hybrid of a chemist and an artisan. Chung is known for his skill in refining lacquer tree sap into traditional Korean lacquer paint.

“Making lacquer paint is a science,” Chung said, adding that it protects products from damage by moths and excessive moisture.

Chung maintains about 400 kilograms of lacquer tree sap, which costs around 270 million won, in the workshop every year. The sap includes that collected from a lacquer tree in Wonju in eastern Gangwon Province. In addition, Chung procures sap from China, a region that like Wonju, is 36 degrees in latitude. Apart from the sap and his skills, he doesn’t use any special tools or techniques in creating his lacquer paint, which is impervious to heat and flame.

“Some people develop a rash when exposed to a lacquer tree,” Chung said. “For some reason, I’ve never had that problem.”

This is an image of an eight-fold lacquer screen Chung Su-wha created using traditional Korean method of repeatedly applying lacquer and using hemp. The nation’s “chiljang” or master of lacquer paint and painting has adopted the images from 16th-century work depicting grass and insects that was drawn by the renowned Korean female writer and artist Shin Saimdang. Chung said he believes the future of Korean lacquer lay in creation of such flat, linear goods to remain attractive and competitive.

His lacquer paint is dense, containing 97 percent sap and 3 percent humidity, and thus, is harder to apply as paint. Creating the paint involves the painstaking process of taking out the humidity through stirring, letting it sit out for a while, and adding iron. Cheaper lacquer paint made from cashews replaced traditional Korean lacquer paint during the Japanese colonial period, and that meant they had additional ingredients. Chung was disappointed and at the same time, challenged to create his own version of the dense lacquer paint that keeps to the Korean tradition of not adding any preservatives.

Chung has worked with lacquer paint since 1967. As an artisan, he is involved with the entire process of lacquerware creation. In addition to the laborious process of refining the sap to turn it into paint, he applies the lacquer paint to and then puts mother-of-pearl pieces on wooden frames to create massive lacquer works.

“Korean lacquerware entails not only painting with lacquer and making designs with mother-of-pearl pieces. It’s an entire process,” Chung said.

Chung’s work produced with natural clear lacquer without the hemp to bring out the texture of the wood.

The humble workshop also contains a big room at the end, where Chung beams like a parent does showing his or her child’s works, from small fountain pens to bowls for Catholic masses to table mats. Yes, table mats painted in lacquer.

Chung also showed an eight-fold screen on which he features a range of works including of Shin Saimdang, the 16th-century Korean female artist and royal designs that were used on king’s attires.

Chung animatedly explained his works but was largely mum about how much his works cost.

“You know, people talk a lot about reaching out to the masses by selling,” Chung said. “But your work becomes a product if it’s sold and remains an artwork if it is not.”

Such grounded confidence, however, didn’t spring overnight. Chung started mastering his craft at age 14. Since then, he has been recognized by the government numerous times, receiving the President’s Award in 1995, the Culture Minister’s Award in a national crafts competition the following year and the title of Important Intangible Cultural Asset No. 113 in 2001. He has also worked on countless high-profile projects, including painting the ceiling of Jongmyo’s main hall yellow-gold in 2005 and in 2006 and repainting the upper part of the five-storied wooden tower that dates back to the Baekje era (18 B.C.-660 A.D.). He has also painted — using only his trademark lacquer paint — traditional Korean houses or “hanok” and edifices for clients, which include the National Assembly.

Chung became an apprentice at the age of 14 because of dire family circumstances. He learned from great teachers, including Lee Yoon-gap and Shin Bu-gil.

As was the case with the apprenticeships at that time, his teachers were tough, but he didn’t think his apprenticeship was harsh overall. “It’s my nature to see anything I’ve started to the end,” Chung said. He kept to the task, learning the trade as the demand for lacquerware in the nation was rising and finally becoming an artisan as the demand was declining.

“There is always a reason a craft declines,” Chung said. He explained that the demand for lacquerware rose because the middle class needed massive lacquer wardrobe chests in their main bedrooms to show to guests. Starting in the 1980s, people no longer showed guests their bedrooms, instead confining social events to their living rooms, which lowered the need for lacquer furniture and goods. Then, in the 1990s, Koreans started entertaining guests in their kitchens, further lowering the demand.

“So now, we have to be proactive and find future sources of the demand for lacquerware. In this century, I see a rising demand in flat, linear products like blinds and frames,” Chung said. These days, he’s hard at work on large-scale folding screens, which are currently in demand in China, where lacquerware nearly died down during the Cultural Revolution.

“I forecast a lot of demand coming from China,” Chung said, explaining that the country has a custom of taking photos with folding screens in the background.

As a craftsman, Chung says he is most happy when he is working on a new design. Thankfully, every time he finishes a product, he finds something in it to improve, which, in turn, prompts him to create a new work. “This is something I do on my own volition,” Chung said, “I take pride in that (independence).

But moreover, Chung believes the entire process and history of mother-of-pearl lacquerware speak of tenacity, which is a Korean national identity and tradition.

“Korean lacquer will not go away,” Chung said. “We the artisans can pass them on to our future generations.” Just as the Gyeongbok Palace still stands to this day owing to the significant efforts of the laborers who built it, traditional Korean lacquerware will also stand the test of time, he said.