As the modem society has rapidly changing, and human life has become richer and richer, design has its values estimated high and its scope of uses expanded broadly. People's criteria for a beautiful design have gradually become diverse with more and more interest in one.
In the middle of those flows, modem people pursue aesthetic values across all the aspects of life and further personal beauty in the three basic elements of life, namely clothing, food, and shelter(衣食住). The concept of shelter can be elaborated as follows :
"Shelter(住)" involves a concept of space, meaning living or dwelling. With the heightened quality level across all the aspects of life, people's aesthetic level for decorating a space has also improved and their demands for more high quality designs have multiplied. Thus they keep looking for more innovative and creative designs.
The investigator selected walls, a planar space that is in the comfortable eye level of people in daily life, as an expressive space like a canvas. Letters were adopted and expressed as ceramic wall decorations to express them three-dimensionally on the planar wall space. The focus was on Hangeul for more in-depth study.
In image expressions for the theme of "There are letters in ceramics," the investigator used a hemispheric shape unique to her container shape (器) and its transformed petal unit along with the images of a hand, a medium for writing (written language) and speech (sign language), and those of a bird, a messenger of letters. The images of a hand and bird were designed based on the perceptive optical illusion that one shape contains two meanings.
Slip casting and clay tablet plastic technique were used to mass produce the units. The basic clay was silk and acid clay, which were mixed at the ratio of 1:5 or 1:1 to express natural colors. Using the letter images as decorative elements, they were inlaid or scratched. After the first firing, they were decorated with glaze.
For the stable coloration of the pigments, oxidized firing was done at 800℃ at the first time and 1250℃ at the second time.
The research findings indicate that the works created an opportunity to realize the values of Hangeul in the past through the theoretical consideration of Hangeul and perceive and understand its potential values. They will also work to promote the sentiment of Korean people home and abroad through the visual designs of Hangeul.
The unit images expressed three dimensions rather than planes and further naturalness with changes to the size and shape without losing a pattern unity.
The study further developed the design concepts of Hangeul based on the theoretical considerations and expressed them on a wall with ease through various colors and playful approaches.