Minhwa_Chaekgado, 264 x 112cm (44 x 112cm X 6 panels), Color on Korean Paper
Korean National Minhwa Award 2019_Minister Prize Awarded (Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism)

Chaekgado 冊架圖 is a painting of bookcases often depicting scholar’s accoutrements. It was one of the mosts prolific art forms in the late nineteenth-century Korea. 

Chaekgado was popularized as the society valued books as symbols of power and knowledge. What interested me was the fact that value of physical books dramatically increased instead of the ideas contained within them. Bookcases became highly popular subject in paintings for royal screens as people desired to possess the picture of piles of books in their house as a symbol of their intellect.

Valuables such as chinaware, jewellery, silk garment, paper and rare fruits were the popular subjects as well as books.