"The Secrets of Trees" - Woodworking with Semi from Somokjang

The division of woodworking into daemok ("greater woodwork") and somok ("lesser woodwork") first appears in the Yingzao Fashi, a book of China's Northern Song dynasty: the former makes beams, columns, rafters and other building members and assembles the house, the latter makes furniture. The master who builds is the daemokjang, in charge of the whole process from planning and design to construction and of supervising the subordinate carpenters. The timber is chosen, cut and shaped, and the separate pieces are assembled and interlocked without nails, in buildings ranging from traditional houses to palaces and temples. The know-how is handed down from generation to generation and takes decades of training and field experience to master; in 2010 "Daemokjang, traditional wooden architecture" was inscribed on UNESCO's Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. The frame of a hanok is put up this way. The somokjang makes chests, boxes, writing equipment and other household objects. Hard zelkova is often used; when the log is sawn, the pattern of the grain is considered for each part; the parts are fitted together with tenons and mortises, again without nails, and a final coat of lacquer lets the grain show through. The name somokjang has been in use since the Goryeo period; until early Joseon, wooden furniture was made mainly for the court and the upper classes, and it spread widely among ordinary households in late Joseon. At Namsangol Hanok Village, the exhibition 축적된 손, 木手 reworks the skills of the traditional carpenter in a new way.

Find a place where two pieces of wood meet and check for nails; then follow the grain and see which way it runs across one surface.

• Hanok 한옥→Traditional houses are among the buildings a daemokjang puts up.
• Lacquer 옻칠→Lacquering is the last step in making somok furniture.