Roof tiles from early Joseon Dynasty revealed by Cultural Heritage Administration

The Cultural Heritage Administration revealed several pieces of ornamental roof tiles, including one shaped like a dragon's head, on Wednesday at the National Palace Museum of Korea in central Seoul. The ornamental roof tile shaped ..

The Cultural Heritage Administration reveals several pieces of ornamental roof tiles that were produced in the early Joseon Dynasty (1392-1910). The artifacts were discovered in 2019 at a mudflat in Taean, South Chungcheong. [YONHAP]

The Cultural Heritage Administration revealed several pieces of ornamental roof tiles, including one shaped like a dragon’s head, on Wednesday at the National Palace Museum of Korea in central Seoul.

The ornamental roof tile shaped like a dragon’s head is known as chuidu. Such ornamental roof tiles used to be installed at both ends of the ridge of the roof on royal palaces from the Joseon Dynasty (1392-1910).

The tile pieces were discovered in a mudflat in Cheongpodae in Taean, South Chungcheong, in September 2019 by a man who was digging for clams. It weighs more than 50 kilograms (110 pounds).

Researchers at CHA believed there would be more ornamental roof tiles of similar shapes from around the same period where the first one was discovered, and managed to find eight more pieces by 2020. Among the discovered pieces was a hilt-shaped ornament that gets stuck on top of the chuidu, known as geompa. One of the pieces fit perfectily into the chuidu discovered by the clam catcher in 2019.

An ornamental roof tile shaped like a dragon's head, called chuido, and the hilt-shaped ornament that gets stacked on top of the chuidu, called geompa [CULTURAL HERITAGE ADMINISTRATION]

The geompa had the practical use of blocking rainfall from flowing into the chuidu.

CHA said that judging by the detail and the sophistication, they were “definitely created by a master artisan.” It also added that this is the first time that an actual artifact was discovered to show what the dragon-head ornamental roof tiles looks like. The exact shape had not been known to the academic world.

“Since we have now secured the real artifact, it will help further our research on ornamental roof tiles used in the early Joseon Dynasty,” said Yang Ki-hong, a researcher from the CHA.

But how did such an important artifact end up in a mudflat in Taean?

The CHA researchers are certain that the artifacts were produced at a state-run workshop that would have been located in present-day Seoul because of their high quality. The researchers assume that a ship that was transporting the ornamental roof tiles to be used for royal temples in a rural area wrecked during transportation, leading to the artifacts ending up in the mudflat.

The National Research Institute of Maritime Cultural Heritage of the CHA plans to examine the artifacts until mid August.

BY YIM SEUNG-HYE [yim.seunghye@joongang.co.kr]