Early 20th century

Wrapping Cloth (Bojagi)

Perhaps the most extraordinary craft produced by Korean women of the Joseon dynasty was the bojagi, a cloth used for a variety of purposes ranging from covering food to wrapping important documents. This particular piece would have been placed over a meal arranged on a dining table. In the Joseon culture of restraint and austerity, women were taught to be frugal; bojagi were frequently constructed from small scraps of fabric leftover from other projects, making their creation an exercise in design. Evoking an air of modernism, some bojagi have been compared to the work of twentieth-century artists Paul Klee (Swiss, 1879–1940) and Piet Mondrian (Dutch, 1872–1944).