Birds and Flowers
The image depicted on this folding screen is not executed in ink, but rather a method called “pyrography" or "nakhwa,” a technique of burning the surface of materials ranging from wood to paper with the delicately controlled application of a heated metal tool. This technique became widely popular in the 19th century. Scorched marks here replace brush strokes. Nakhwa method is now designated as a Korean Intangible Cultural Asset by the Korean government.
Colors in this work
Details
- Artist
- Unknown artist
- Date
- late 1800s
- Dimensions
- overall: height 1.535 m, width 4.43 m; each screen: height 1.036 m, width 0.305 m
- Department
- Korean Art
- Holding institution
- Cleveland Museum of Art
- Palette
-
Select a color to find related artworks.
- Image provider
- cleveland-museum-of-art
- License
- CC0-1.0
- Credit
- Seventy-fifth anniversary gift of Alan Carter Covell and Kyu J. Pak-Covell
Art Genome Taxonomy
10 tags
Subject Matter
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Animals Both · 99%
The title identifies Birds and Flowers, and the image visibly includes multiple birds among the botanical compositions.
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Flora Both · 99%
The title identifies Flowers, while the image clearly shows flowering stems, grasses, branches, and other botanical forms throughout the ten panels.
Visual Qualities
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Patterns Visual · 98%
Repeated dark circular motifs cover the teal ground around and between the tan pictorial fields.
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Linear Forms Visual · 96%
The imagery is constructed primarily from fine linear scorched marks, including contours and denser worked passages in the plants, birds, and rocks.
Medium and Techniques
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Painting Metadata · 99%
The Cleveland Museum of Art classifies the object as Painting.
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Work on Paper Metadata · 99%
The catalog describes a ten-panel folding screen with designs and inscriptions burnt into paper.
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Burned/Charred Metadata · 98%
The museum explicitly describes the technique as pyrography, with scorched marks replacing brush strokes; the image visibly shows brown burned linear marks.
Time Periods
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19th Century Art Metadata · 99%
The catalog dates the work to the late 1800s, with a date range of 1800–1899.
Geographic Regions
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Asian Art Metadata · 97%
The Cleveland Museum of Art identifies the place of origin as Korea and classifies the work as Korean Art; the catalog provides Asian Art as the applicable broader regional category.
Materials
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Use of Paper Metadata · 99%
The catalog identifies paper as the surface into which the designs and inscriptions were burned.
Source & rights
Unknown artist. Birds and Flowers. Cleveland Museum of Art.
High-resolution sources
- Original TIFF ↗ 18,695 × 6,493 · Cleveland Museum Of Art · Available