The Korean traditional Nubi's unique character of creating new and stereoscopic forms in flat and monotonous cloth has been widely applied to craftworks and fashion design interior until now and also studied in various ways.
The word of Nubi is origi...
The Korean traditional Nubi's unique character of creating new and stereoscopic forms in flat and monotonous cloth has been widely applied to craftworks and fashion design interior until now and also studied in various ways.
The word of Nubi is originated from '(衲衣)―Buddhist monk's patched and re-patched robe', but today it means a dressmaking-method to quilt cotton between inside and outside fabric.
Such method includes putting cotton between lining and shell of cloth, overlapping quilt, quilting without cotton or quilting with single fabric.
Nubi could be called quilt but it has more complex structures than those of quilt and is generally thought to be a concept of 'Chogagbo'-patchwork wrapping-cloth and embroidery included in it.
Compared to quilt, Nubi features broad-stitching or sewing, showing usually repeated forms of stripes, graceful and moderate beauty of space.
Nubi protects human body and materials from harsh conditions and has ornamental purposes (each stitch in Nubi is contributed to decoration line) and religious use and gets a feature of recycling of fabric as well.
Nubi has been broadly used for almost items from clothing to daily supplies.
Regardless of class, gender and age, most people of the Chosun Dynasty enjoyed Nubi-made items and that is recorded in 'Gungjungbalgi' (specifi- cation of main items related to clothing and ornament and foods used in the Royal Court), pictures or dresses at that time.
According to the distance of sewing lines as one of its traditional classifications, Nubi is categorized into JanNubi (thin line), JungNubi (middle sized-line) and DumunNubi (scarce line). And it also could be classified into OmokNubi, NabjakNubi by the forms of sewing. The classification of Nubi based on the existence of cotton, how to sew and the directions of lines was all newly made in modern era.
Gungjungbalgi shows that JanNubi is usually applied to Nubi items (54%) but most Nubi dress items that have been discovered until now are generally JungNubi (68%), which means the Chosun's Royal family used refined JanNubi while JungNubi for the general citizens and the gentry.
The aesthetic analysis of Nubi is carried out focused on symbolism, utility and formativeness.
In the aspect of symbolism, Nubi expresses a little religious desire for good fortune, ultimately a strong wish for blessed life of humans.
And as a religious symbolic meaning, Nubi has Buddhism, Confucianism and Taoism. Buddhism especially among them more influenced the use and symbolism of Nubi.
Regularity of stripes and line repetition shown on stitching lines of Nubi represents the images of Confucian self-restraint, moral standard and order.
Nubi is a kind of a revelation of aesthetic sense that was formed in the Confucian social standards which most women had in the Chosun Dynasty along with Korean people's own thought and its symbolism.
Taoism was harmonized with Confucianism and the thought of wishing for blessing and had an effect on the formation of shamanistic meaning of Nubi.
Regarding utility, Nubi shows its adaptation to nature along with seeking convenience in daily life and in that sense Nubi gives us its elaborate and refined beauty even though it was not produced by the will of experts and craftsmen.
In the analysis of formativeness of Nubi, I used analysis based on the principle of form-structure and motive and for the color analysis of Nubi, various elements of balance were applied.
To get reference materials for the formativeness analysis of Nubi, I selected and classified 57-excavated relics and private-own 53 ones from the 15th to the early 20th century from college, national and public museums.
From the viewpoint of points, lines and sides, the three elements contributing to form-structure, a stitch of Nubi is linked with a point and the connection of the stitch is regarded as line and the sewing line of Nubi could be divided by directions.
Regular and repeating moderate stitching is one of the features of Nubi and its sewing lines are mostly straight lines but in case of women's cloth, Nubi has two types in terms of line distance and a higher-level type of patch up of several pieces of cloth.
The form of the sewing line of Nubi could be motive, showing symmetry. That symmetry includes parallel translation-type symmetry, radial symmetry, 45° rotation and 90° rotation and among them parallel translation-type symmetry is generally used in Nubi. In articles in daily use, the motive of curve is shown as radial symmetry. 45° rotation and 90° rotation are shown on Korean socks (when cutting the ankle of a sock) and on bedclothes respectively.
In the color analysis of Nubi, based on the thought of yin-yang and Five-Elements (five fundamental elements which are believed to constitute and manage the entire universe) theory, 5-direction colors (blue, white, red, black and yellow) are used and ivory color is preferred.
Colors used in Nubi are similar to those used for dress, ornament and daily supplies, but for decoration various colored threads are also selected.
I could analyze the formativeness of Nubi from the results of the analyses mentioned above.
Nubi in the regular structure maintains its visual unity and balance. And changes from directions of stitching, symmetry forms, the distance of stitch lines and color-use helped understand and systemize the formativeness of Nubi as a whole.
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