Cheongju
— — where the first metal type met paper.
Not only on a wall.
“The provincial capital of North Chungcheong, about 120 kilometres south of Seoul. In 1377, at Heungdeoksa Temple outside the old city, monks printed the Jikji — the oldest surviving book made with movable metal type, seventy-eight years before Gutenberg. The temple is gone; the Cheongju Early Printing Museum stands on the site. The city around it is modern and quiet, threaded by the Musim River. from the studio
Cheongju, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Cheongju is the capital of North Chungcheong Province in central South Korea, about 120 kilometres south of Seoul, with a population of roughly 860,000. The old city grew along the Musim River and around Sangdang Sanseong, a mountain fortress whose walls were rebuilt under King Sukjong in 1716. Cheongju International Airport serves the region. The 2014 administrative merger with Cheongwon County extended the city's footprint over a broad agricultural valley that still produces the rice and ginseng the region has long been known for.
In 1377 the monks of Heungdeoksa Temple on the city's outskirts printed the Jikji, a Buddhist anthology that is the oldest surviving book made with movable metal type — seventy-eight years before the Gutenberg Bible. Only the second volume survives, held since 1900 in the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris. UNESCO inscribed the Jikji on its Memory of the World register in 2001. The temple site, rediscovered in 1985, now holds the Cheongju Early Printing Museum, which sits at the centre of the city's identity.
The Early Printing Museum is open Tuesday through Sunday and sits beside the excavated foundations of Heungdeoksa Temple. Sangdang Sanseong, on the eastern ridge above the city, can be walked along its 4.2-kilometre wall in an afternoon. The Cheongju Craft Biennale, held since 1999, runs every two years in autumn and draws makers from across Asia and Europe. The traditional market in Yukgeori has been trading since the Joseon period and is the place to find the local rice wine, songjeolju.