If you have memories of eating school lunches of barley-mixed rice from nickel silver containers heated up over charcoal stoves, you will probably remember these sights: rows of eggs wrapped individually in straw, straw winnowers which would separate the chaffed heads from the grain, straw ring baskets with sides decorated with patterns of all colors, wicker crates in the attic containing mother's colorful bridal skirt and blouse.... Unfortunately, these things have now disappeared from our view. If we were lucky (?) we traded them in for taffy; but usually we simply treated them like trash. Now the house is full of nothing but freshly baked plastics right out of the factory. That's why we've decided to seek out this place, to get a taste of the musty coziness which straw used to give out in those days.

At the Straw and Grass Handicrafts Museum, one can find every possible imaginable thing which can be made from straw and grass, from mats, shoes, mesh bags, and baskets to raincoats, tablecloths, and masks. These items were collected over a period of ten years by An Byung- sun, the curator, who early on recognized the beauty of straw culture. Knowing the fragility of straw & grass goods, and distressed over a climate in which those familiar with the straw culture were growing fewer and fewer and straw & grass arts and crafts were not receiving their rightful recognition as traditional cultural objects, he decided to invest everything he had. As a result, in 1993 the only museum in the world which specializes in straw and grass handicrafts was born.

Unlike pottery or paintings, straw & grass culture was a culture created by the masses, a culture made by farmers according to their everyday needs. Rather than presenting a sumptuous feast of luxury for the eyes, a recent exhibition, "Straw and Grass Baskets," consisted of useful, practical shapes. The museum owns some four thousand items, but a regrettable lack of space means that the items cannot be all displayed at once, but must be shown alternately in scheduled exhibitions.

Plans for this year include an exhibition of "Straw Shoes of the West" and a lecture on straw & grass culture which will include a hands-on session. Visitors to the museum include art majors, foreign tourists and young children on vacation, as well as students of folklore and history. It is only open to the public on Saturdays and Sundays from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Entrance fees of 2000 won for adults and 1000 won for students, with discounts for groups, are being charged beginning with the current exhibition.

The museum is located in a back alley off splendid boutique-filled Chongnamdong Street. To get there, one can take subway line no. 2 to Sunnung station and take city bus no. 63, or take bus no. 710 from the subway line no. 3 Apkujung station and get off at the Chongdam intersection. The buses that stop there include no. 710, 63, 567, 137, and seat buses 30 and 567

But more important than finding the museum is viewing it properly, because there are many people who handle the objects recklessly. The young students who swarm into the museum during vacations are a problem as well. Says An Sang-kyung, one of the docents: "Even when the students are yelling and running about not paying any attention to the objects on display, the parents don't do anything. Once we had some foreign visitors who seemed to be really puzzled by the children's behavior. I think they were confused less by the disruptive children than by the parents who just let them run about." The phone number of the museum is 516-5585.

The Story of Straw Shoes

The straw shoe is definitely the representative straw handicraft. These days catching sight of the genuine article is difficult, even on a historical drama on television, but once upon a time everyone wore straw shoes. According to curator In Byung-sun's research, records exist of people wearing straw shoes during the Mahan age of about 2000 years ago. Since written records exist from that time, our ancestors must have made and worn shoes of straw long before then, even if no conclusive evidence remains because straw and grass perish so easily.

After Shilla unified the peninsula by conquering Koguryo and Paekche, however, some people began wearing leather shoes, because the customs of Koguryo, where the development of hunting led to the wide availability of leather, filtered down to the south. People were divided into those who could wear leather shoes and those who had to wear mere (?) straw shoes, thus making even shoes reflect the concept of "rank." There was even a rule which prohibited commoners from wearing any other shoes than straw ones, as if the shoes had been born before the people.

Still, those who wore straw shoes were constantly trying to figure out how to make shoes which were more attractive. As a result, straw shoes were crafted to a level of beauty which surpassed that of a mere throw-on article of footwear. Originally made of only straw, shoes came to be made of finer material such as sedge and cattail, and later the use of flax, mulberry fiber, arrowroot bark, and white paper led to the creation of such sophisticated footwear as "mitoori." This type of shoe was called "go-oon shin" ("pretty shoes"), and there were crude ones called "makchigi" as well. The shoes in the picture are a type of "go-oon shin," so smooth and fine that one could put them on a newborn baby. They are a complete contrast to the frequently-seen examples which look like tangled masses of string.

But petty officials and impoverished yangban (the aristocratic class) expropriated "mitoori" after its appearance, and the common people had to wear the ordinary straw shoes again -- straw shoes seem to have just as a complicated history as our own families do. For yangban, there were even straw shoe makers called "jipsin hallabum" ("straw shoe grandpa").

It's easy to think that straw shoes are all the same, but Curator In points out that they had many shapes and names according to time and place. Those in mourning called their shoes "umjipsin"; even though the shoes looked the same, they had different names according to the occasion. When traveling along a snow-covered road, people wore shoes called "seolpi," which were made by curving ash branches and wrapping them with string and straw. This is probably why we used to wrap string around our fur and rubber shoes.

"Deunggumishin" is made by heightening the ankle portion of the shoe to make it stylish, something like a modern-day boot. A "deunggumi" is a straw container whose sides are woven straight up from the edges of the circular bottom.

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