한국 전통예술과 문자도 ㅣ studio Kim Kyungho

Before we meet the next character in the Blessing Series, it's worth stepping back to ask a simple question: what exactly is munjado? The answer begins in the late Joseon Dynasty (1392–1910), a period when Confucian ethics shaped nearly every corner of Korean life — including the walls of the home. Painted or embroidered screens called munjado, built around eight Chinese characters representing the core Confucian virtues (filial piety, brotherly love, loyalty, trust, propriety, righteousness, integrity, and a sense of shame), hung in the rooms of ordinary families, often a child's own room. They weren't decoration in the way we usually mean it. They were lessons a family could live inside — a quiet, daily reminder of how to be a good son, a good neighbor, a good person, taught through image rather than lecture. What makes munjado genuinely strange and wonderful, even centuries later, is how those lessons were painted. A munjado character is never just brushed ink. Look clos...

At first glance, this painting looks like nothing but affection. Two arms curve outward like a wide yoke across the top, every inch of them covered in red hearts. Beneath that crossbar, faces smile out from a chain of linked figures — arms interlocked, torsos stacked one below the other — until the whole shape closes into a single large ring at the bottom, with a thin string of small red beads running down its center like a heartbeat made visible. It looks, in other words, like a painting entirely about love. But its title points somewhere older and stranger: this is Hyeongje-bok (형제복), the third work in Studio Kim Kyungho's Blessing Series, and it is drawn — deliberately, faithfully — in the style of jeonseo (篆書), the ancient seal script Korean and Chinese calligraphers used more than two thousand years ago. The character underneath, 弟 (je), simply means "younger sibling" today. But its original picture had nothing to do with family at all. A Rope, Wound Around a Stick L...