Designing and Craftsmanship

 The ddp, a landmark of Dongdaemun market, has many monumental attractions. Among them, the Kansong Art Museum, which displays valuable cultural assets, will be an exciting tour course for anyone. The cultural property displayed there, Goryeo celadon (Goryeo dojagi, also known as Goryeo cheong-ja) is one of the rare exhibits that are well known worldwide. 

A famous scholar of the Goryeo Dynasty, Yi Gyu-bo left a review on such the exhibit, Goryeo cheong-ja, as follows. +

“Blue as jasper, bright as crystal.” 

As impressed by what I saw and felt at the British Museum in London 40 years ago, Goryeo cheong-ja is still widely loved by people around the world. Needless to say, Goryeo cheong-ja seems to hold a mysterious beauty thanks to its iconic blue-green color and its perfectly balanced shape. The praise of Goryeo cheong-ja by the people of the Song Dynasty in ancient China was surprisingly high.

“Jade-colored Goryeo cheong-ja is the best under heaven.” ++

From historical facts, the Goryeo cheong-ja, the world’s first metal-type was the product of people’s craftsmanship at that time.

When we say craftsmanship, it’s the quality that comes from creating with passion, care, and attention to detail. It is a quality that is honed, refined, and practiced over the course of a career. 

Craftsmanship is quite different from a few techniques of artisans’ work. Artisans and craftsmen work in an artistic capacity, both creating items with their hands. In this discussion, artisans tend to work on more unique projects designed for aesthetic appeal while craftsmen master the creation of functional, mass-produced items.

Anyway, craftsmanship is the quality that something has when it is beautiful and has been very carefully made. Recently, craftsmen of this era have been recreating and producing immortal Goryeo cheong-ja in various places including Gangjin, Jeollanam-do, Korea.





-Some of the popular Dongdaemun fashion items we exported last week, seoulclick.com- 


With this craftsmanship, Dongdaemun designers are also reinventing and designing better fashion products, influenced by the pride of ancestors who made the cultural works, Goryeo cheong-ja. They are also patriotic Koreans, well-educated in history. Their thoughts and actions themselves are craftsmanship.

In fact, Dongdaemun designers live in difficult work environments such as low wages and hard work compared to famous designers in global fashion companies. 


No matter how difficult the market situation is, however, they consider the designer job as a gift from heaven and are patient and working hard for a bright tomorrow. A Spanish designer, Cristobal Balenciaga said.

“A good fashion designer must be an architect for the patterns, a sculptor for the shape, a painter for the designs, a musician for the harmony, and a philosopher for the fit.” +++

This is a quote that we should consider as valuable as gold or jade, and it is a basic philosophy of Dongdaemun designers’ behavior and a guideline for design work. Perhaps it will be helpful to Dongdaemun designers in their creative work activities and their achievements.

On the anticipated situation after the 4th Industrial Revolution, we will often understand and discuss AI, automation, the end of hard work, etc. At that time, anyone might think that craftsmanship was not very important, and the market conditions of online and Un-tact commerce could also be more generalized. 

Paradoxically, however, the new spirit of age will reinvest in the forgotten value of craftsmanship, time management, accountability of customer satisfaction management, and overcoming uncertainty, and so on. In particular, there will be more re-awareness of the value of craftsmanship, more work to be done and more employment opportunities. 

Dongdaemun designers are always awakened by inheriting the craftsmanship of their ancestors who manufactured valuable Goryeo cheong-ja. 

As an Italian film director, Federico Fellini said, Dongdaemun designers should continue their fateful work under the belief that “Style is craftsmanship.”

+ Goryeo, which was the origin of ‘Korea’, is a country that flourished from 918 to 1392, before the Joseon Dynasty. 

++ koreatourinformation.com/blog 2013/12/05/timeless-beauty…

+++ azquotes.com/author/23462

<46>



Bong Sul (Advisor, SeoulClick)

www.seoulclick.com

Read more: Bong (Bong Sik) Sul, Dongdaemun Style, ebook.kstudy.com, Seoul, 2019.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The 2nd Dongdaemun Myth, which the Curtain has already risen (Spread of Online Commerce)

Image
As we often discussed, wholesalers in Dongdaemun market have continued to grow and develop their business size and performance with a peculiar marketing strategy of ‘selling good fashion products at lower prices’. Recently, however, the number of local retailers and foreign buyers visiting Dongdaemun wholesale market has declined significantly. Many people have been greatly worried about the difficult situation of Dongdaemun market. Is Dongdaemun market a chronic management crisis? Or is the market's future situation really dark? Instead of answering this question, we need to think about the causes of today's management crisis in Dongdaemun market. Depending on the idea, the phenomenon is due to the concentration of population in Seoul and the metropolitan area, and the recession of the local economy caused by the aftermath. As well as, there is a big reason for the rapid increase in the size of online commerce. On the other hand, such an increase in online com...
Read more

Dongdaemun Fashion and Supply-side Management

Image
  We often discuss whether the source of any fashion product is a design lab and a sewing factory, or a market to meet consumers. The issue of debate is whether it is a push on the supply side or a pull on the demand side. In fact, accounts differ.   Of course, designers’ creative designs, production in sewing factories, and supply and shipment to the wholesale market are made according to the consumer needs or preferences, and their desires. Some of suppliers, however, act as a driving force to stimulate and induce fashion consumers’ preferences and willingness to buy.   In Dongdaemun market, many designers, entrepreneurial wholesalers, and many small and medium-sized sewing factories scattered in Gangbuk, Seoul, as well as shops of an innumerable number of textiles and various fashion parts, are focused mainly on supply- side management.   They make decisions together or separately. They are partners, but sometimes competitors. Business behavior between these partn...
Read more

Dongdaemun Fashion and Innovation of Logistics System

Image
As is widely known, Dongdaemun market is a global shopping district that sells designers’ fashion products at low prices. In Dongdaemun market, however, its market competitiveness based on low price has been weakening gradually due to rising wages and other costs. In the late stages of development, it is true that Dongdaemun market is difficult to avoid the trend of wage increase., Furthermore, it is a big problem of the market that the cost is not reduced due to the inefficiency of physical distribution. We know about the Amazon effects, which have recently come up with an amazing business wave. As CEO Jeff Bezos said, Amazon’s mission is simple. They are trying to discover what products the global consumers want to buy and deliver the products to everyone on the planet. T o improve its performance and cost factors, Amazon is investing heavily in the mechanization of its warehouses. We should know that the key to Amazon’s success is, more than anything else, driven by l...
Read more