• Conservation Science in Museum
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• v.15
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• pp.96-121
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• 2014

Portrait of Sim Huisu is a seventeenth-century Joseon portrait of a meritorious vassal. The National Museum of Korea currently owns two portraits of Sim Huisu, which are the eldest son's family and by the eldest grandson of the family's second eldest son. Both were donated in 1980. Portraits were still in its original mounting, but the supporting silk had been damaged and stained in a flood. Conservation treatment was undertaken to restore the original style, and scientific analysis, such as, X-ray, XRD, XRF and Graff "C" stain, was conducted to study the materials and painting techniques. The support silk was found to be refined fibroin and a plain weave consisting of two weft threads and one warp thread. The lining papers were found to be bamboo fiber paper of first layer in China and Korean traditional mulberry paper in second. Various pigments were identified in the painting, including white lead, cinnabar, atacamite, ink stick, azurite, silver, and gold. The study also confirmed the use of the back painting, with colors such as white ^{White Lead}, green ^Atacamite, orange ^Minium, black ^{Ink Stick}, and yellow ^Dye. Also, it was found that stick ink or dye was used with white lead.

• Korean Journal of Heritage: History & Science
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• v.56 no.1
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• pp.80-97
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• 2023

By taking wallpaper specimens from Gyeongbokgung Palace, Changdeokgung Palace, and Chilgung Palace preserved from the late Joseon Dynasty to the present, we planned in this study to determine the types and characteristics of the paper used as wallpaper in the Joseon royal family. First, we confirmed the features of paper hanging in the palaces with old literature on the wallpaper used by the royal family based on archival research. Second, we conducted a field survey targeting the royal palaces whose construction period was relatively clear, and analyzed the first layer of wallpaper directly attached to the wall structure after sampling the specimens. Therefore, we confirmed that the main raw material was hanji, which was used as a wallpaper by the royal family, and grasped the types of substances(dyes and pigments) used to produce a blue color in spaces that must have formality by analyzing the blue-colored paper. Based on the results confirmed through the analysis, we checked documents and the existing wallpaper by comparing the old literature related to wallpaper records of the Joseon Dynasty palaces. We also built a database for the restoration of cultural properties when conserving the wallpaper in the royal palaces. We examined the changes in wallpaper types by century and the content according to the place of use by extracting wallpaper-related contents recorded in 36 cases of Uigwe from the 17th to 20th centuries. As a result, it was found that the names used for document paper and wallpaper were not different, thus document paper and wallpaper were used without distinction during the Joseon Dynasty. And though there are differences in the types of wallpaper depending on the period, it was confirmed that the foundation of wallpaper continued until the late Joseon Dynasty, with Baekji(white hanji), Hubaekji(thick white paper), jeojuji(common hanji used to write documents), chojuji(hanji used as a draft for writing documents) and Gakjang(a wide and thick hanji used as a pad). As a result of fiber identification by the morphological characteristics of fibers and the normal color reaction(KS M ISO 9184-4: Graph "C" staining test) for the first layer of paper directly attached to the palace wall, the main materials of hanji used by the royal family were confirmed and the raw materials used to make hanii in buildings of palaces based on the construction period were determined. Also, as a result of analyzing the coloring materials of the blue decorative paper with an optical microscope, ultraviolet-visible spectroscopic analysis(UV-Vis), and X-ray diffraction analysis(XRD), we determined that the type of blue decorative paper dyes and pigments used in the palaces must have formality and identified that the raw materials used to produce the blue color were natural indigo, lazurite and cobalt blue.