Chogakbo: Piecing Together History
Introduction
Fig. 1: A pojagi made of a center square (red), a border of green, a border of hot pink, a border of purple, and a tan border with red straps, embellished with fake sewn maedeup
From Chosŏn dynasty cloth and food wrappings to modern robed and curtains, chogakbo has managed to make it through industrialization and transform itself from a craft of necessity to an art form. Chogakbo is often said to ‘glitter with a wonderful pattern’ [2]. With the fabric it was traditionally made from, chogakbo indeed shine and sparkled in the light, highlighting the simplistic beauty of this product through ages as this singular aspect of chogakbo has remained unchanged. However, scholarship on the female arts is far and few, leaving recreational processes from those who wish to learn and weren’t or couldn’t be taught are either full of holes or incomplete. Tacit knowledge on chogakbo becomes a rare commodity that is not being disseminated. Through this reproduction, I seek to find what exactly is being kept within family lines and I also seek to find what makes this asymmetrical form of chogakbo different from the other form in terms of creation process and mental considerations that have to be made during the process.
What is Chogakbo?
Chogakbo, a form of wrapping cloth called pojagi, is made from small pieces of different colored fabric sew together. Pojagi were used not only to wrap items (from clothes and bedding to food dishes) but were also used to cover tables, and religious rituals [1]. These were typically square, with the occasional rectangular shape, and, because of the nature of the nature of chogakbo, they were made from a variety of colors and shapes. Other than this patchwork method, pojagi were also embellished with embroidery or, if they were court pojagi, they were decorated with paintings [3]. The sizes of these pieces were generally anywhere between 11-14ft, largely used to wrap items, hence the English translation “wrapping cloth”.
Pojagi were used largely through households of all socio-economic classes, but chogakbo began as a necessity for the lower-class women who had less economic stability, and therefore, ability, to buy fabric every time they wanted or needed to make another pojagi. With prices for fabric, even those such as ramie and cotton, high and the inability of most lay people to afford to buy fabric for such large sewing projects, most could only afford to use leftover cloth from clothing to even make these. However, as neo-Confucianism took ahold of Korean society, women were confined to their inner quarters and what did they have except their needle? [1] These women experimented with a variety of methods, designs and styles, and while there are no written records of these, we can see them in what remains of both court and populace pojagi.
Experiment: Reconstruction from Images (w. Supplements)
Fig. 2: A pojagi made from tiny black fabric scraps sew together in the shape of a square with four long tails on each corner
Fig. 3: A pojagi made from tan fabric scraps sew together to the shape of a square with a tan border and a tail attached to each end.
I chose to reconstruct from an image of a chogakbo-style pojagi in the Seoul Museum of Craft Art. This image is from the late nineteenth/early twentieth century and was titled exactly what it is: Chogakbo Pojagi. This piece is made using one entire color of ramie fabric pieced together using a kkekki or tongsol style seam. Both the kkekki and tongsol stitch are layered seams that add strength and dexterity to the edges and are typically used with unlined fabrics, such as types of silk or other thin fabrics such as ramie or hemp [2]. Because there is hardly any written work on pojagi or female crafts in general, most of what exists, exists through secondhand scholarship from women who were taught pojagi and sewing (ch’imsŏn). Due to the lack of resources, for learning specific sewing methods, such as the types of seams and how to start and end sewing chunks, I needed to use second-hand sources on sewing. While understanding just chogakbo were made is crucial to reconstructing the craft, I sought to learn all aspects of pojagi and sewing so as to access the tacit resources these women would have had as they were creating chogakbo themselves.
For my reconstruction, I substituted ramie fabric for cotton fabric, mainly because ramie fabric was not as readily available to me, and cotton was used in the later part of the Chosŏn dynasty in pojagi making as well because of how well it holds against water [1]. With that substitution came the change in stitch, as the kkekki stitch used in the model photo is not well suited for heavier fabrics such as cotton, whereas the kareumsol seam, a non-layered seam, is more practical for the fabric I was using. I also deviated slightly from the single color chogakbo in an attempt to recreate the different shades of white on the original model.
Despite all the substitutions, I believe I was able to recreate something that was not only a decent recreation in terms of methodology but also engaged with current scholarship on the work and sought to make a stance on chogakbo creation. While most pojagi that is shown in terms of being historical is like the figure below (Fig. ), this type of chogakbo was less straight forward and required more of an edge outwards approach. This chogakbo is rarely taught and part of it lies in complexity and part lies in the simple fact that this form of chogakbo was primarily kept between women of the lower class and passed through tacit knowledge under the eye of a master [2]. I seek to model chogakbo works using current scholarship and evaluate, however loosely, my work in relation to the methods available.
Reconstruction: Putting the pieces together
When I first started piecing together what my recreation would look like, I started with choosing and cutting my fabric. Mentioned above, I substituted ramie (inaccessible) with 100% cotton (accessible). I then cut back pieces that I would fold over and use to make my edge lining at the very end, thus sealing away any unlined edges of the main piece of the edge itself, as well as hiding away the rough edges on the ‘wrong’ side of the work. When working with cotton, the edges fray and are rough easily, so I borrowed a method for a more traditional chogakbo edge and backing method, simply because I forwent the kkekki stitch and thus my edges were not nearly as well done.
Utensils:
Pen/Pencil
Fabric/Thread Scissors
Thread (I used embroider thread since it was stronger and thicker per singular strand)
Needle (size 5)
Fabric (100% cotton)
Ruler (in place of a fabric presser)
(Optional) Thread cutter & needle threader
To begin, I start sewing along the invisible edge column. What is meant by this is that most of this type of chogakbo, where the pieces are of all shapes and sizes, are started from a ‘column’ or initial ‘square’ where, I believe, the maker is attempting to ‘root’ their project and create a workable base that can eventually achieve the square or rectangular shape that is the final end product. I am using a deeper, goldish thread color because a typical kareumsol seam uses a contrastive color [1]. So, it is here that my deviation from the original work shows itself and instead adjusts itself according to the substitutions I had to make. The start and end of each stitch required I learn the Korean method to starting and ending each stitch. This required threading the needle and taking the end, by end I mean the end opposite the end you’ve just threaded and winding it around your needle three times. Once it’s winded, then the winded bit must be tightly pinched, and the needle pulled through all of the way until a knot forms. To end a stitch, you wind the needle close to the last stitch made and then pull it all the way through once more. Any excess is cut off.
Before my final project, this recreation, there was a half-hearted attempt to make chogakbo from the middle outwards, and this was so difficult, I gave up less than half-way through. Because the piecing together of this type of chogakbo needs to be done so that the edges become clear, since the pieces themselves are not all symmetrical squares, there needs to be a method that takes non-square pieces (such as irregular triangles, pieces that are not quite squares, etc.) and put them together so that the end result is the same shape and/or size as if they had used squares or right triangles.
For my project, however, I started by utilizing tiny triangles, purposefully uneven, to begin the ‘root’ of my work. Initially I folded the edges I wanted to put together, pressing the two pieces together with the folded part inside and sewing along the area where they are combined. I put these two pieces together, after pinning them together using a needle, using the kareumsol stitch and pre-folded all of the edges on each side of the fabric piece so that sewing them together would not only be easier, but so I wasn’t forced to undo or fold stitches. I attempted to keep the stitches close together but then started spacing them out a bit as I was going because I felt that the stitches were too tight and wouldn’t press themselves down properly. Then I switched back to smaller stitches, unhappy with how the larger and longer stitches made the work look in comparison to the demonstrated image I had of the stitch. As I progressed into the work, I gathered more tacit knowledge on the stitch, and my stitches became more uniform as well as resembled the visual of the stitch I had.
When I got to the edges, I took a piece of fabric larger than my work (where I modeled my work size after this back piece) and folded the edges over to create a border. To attach this, I simply used the kareumsol stitch all around and the piece was done.
With this recreation, I used pieces that were small, albeit not tiny, and some that were on the larger and longer size, mimicking pieces found in a variety of chogakbo works I had seen, including the two models.
Final Thoughts
Through this recreation process, I found a lot of missing gaps in current work on chogakbo and pojagi creation that leaves out the lower-class women whose work is prized and recreated and displayed to large extents today. And that is chogakbo using pieces that have little semblance to a square and use uneven edges. Despite dozens of museums and art gallery shows displaying chogakbo as an “art of waste” and an uneven art, there is hardly any look into proper recreation of the art itself and instead focuses on works and pieces that were grounded within the royal court [2]. My work instead sought to recreate the unheard woman’s work—chogakbo of actual pieces, arguably, the truer form of chogakbo, hence the reason it is grounded so heavily in mother to daughter tacit teaching and learning. I found that a lot of the process for myself was trial and error because the guidelines and the photo did not hold enough information regarding the actual process of sewing and instead, I had to continually try and re-try different methods of sewing and of piecing the fabric pieces together to create the end-game square. Additionally, while I am well skilled in embroidery, sewing for chogakbo utilizes skills that are similar in some ways and incredibly different in others, making it a skill that is very much rooted in practice and trial and error to find a method of holding the fabric, holding the needle, winding the thread, etc. that works for yourself. Current scholarship has not touched upon this chogakbo style as a recreation style and instead nearly all of the current scholarship revolved around even and symmetrical pieces. Therefore, I find them ineffective for people who wish to recreate chogakbo that uses uneven pieces, especially considering that this form of chogakbo is popular. Not only do they not talk about the aspect of sewing along non-square edges, but they do not address connecting pieces that are not as symmetrical and even as squares and rectangles.
I also found that that edge outwards method of creating my chogakbo was highly effective, incredibly more effective than the first trial I attempted where I attempted to create it the way one might create chogakbo and pojagi that uses squares and other symmetrical pieces of fabric. Not only was it significantly easier and made more sense as I was building my way to a larger piece. The cotton frayed often and working the frayed edges away and have them consistently be on the same side made working the cotton easier as well. By working from one side and building a solid side before working in other directions, I gave myself wiggle room to over and under add fabric as I needed, as well as fit fabric to spaces that needed to be filled, rather than building outwards. I think if I were to recreate this project, however, I would seek ramie fabric, as the fabric itself is easier for beginner seamstresses because of the lower thread count and also sturdier. I would also seek out a traditional fabric folder that Korean seamstresses had but that was inaccessible to me and thus substituted with a ruler. If I had these two aspects of the chogakbo I was looking to replicate, then I may have been able to create a more accurate and better looking chogakbo, as well as have more to challenge current recreation scholarship on the topic. Therefore, my recreation brings to light a valid and effective creation method that hasn’t been addressed in current works, as well as starts the conversation on delving deeper into the recreation and creation process of the more asymmetrical and uneven type of chogakbo.
Bibliography
[1] Cook, Sara. Bojagi, New York: Batsford, 2019.
[2] Son, Yeong-hak. Handicrafts of the Korean People. Translated by Yeong-ju Yang. Seoul: Dahal Media, 2004.
[3] Park, Ga-young, Yeo-kyung Kim, and Su-jin Song. Chimseon: Korean traditional sewing. Seoul: Korea Craft & Design Foundation, 2016.
Images:
Fig. 1: Chogak Sangpojagi Seoul Museum of Craft Art.
Fig. 2: Chogakbo Pojagi, Seoul Museum of Craft Art
Fig. 3: Chogakbo Pojagi, Seoul Museum of Craft Art.