Dudes and the feathers in their caps
Has it seriously been a month since I updated? o_O THE TIME WHERE DOES IT GO
My friends who have given me encouragements on the Soseono novel will be heartened to know that my obsession with the project continues apace. I've done a substantial amount of research on the politics of the period, at least in the internal politics among the heroine's people, so I've moved on to the daily lives including clothing, food, and architecture.
I've started on clothing first because it's the best researched and documented among the "daily life" topics. Goguryeoh in particular has a wealth of primary sources on these, because starting around the second or third century A.D. these people started painting elaborate tomb murals depicting everyday scenes like dancing, parades, cooking, fighting and so on. (In later periods the murals become more abstract and religious, closing this window into the material lives of their eras.)
There's a lot of research on specific subjects depicted in these murals. Recently I read an entire paper on men's headgear, for instance. Evidently Goguryeoh men wore caps, and noblemen wore feathers in their caps to denote their status. Feathered caps are shown in various murals including the following the third or fourth century depiction of a hunt.
Hunting scene from a Goguryeoh tomb mural in Jilin, China (click image for source)
My problem is that these sources, as with so much else, post-date my chosen period by at least three centuries. This means I need to extrapolate backward and imagine how these hats would have looked in the late 1st century B.C. and 1st century A.D. when my heroine was alive.
For instance, the hat-feathers in archeological finds are not actual bird feathers but imitation feathers made of leather or cloth. These have certain advantages over real feathers--not as perishable, more durable, can be styled to specification etc. It's not too much of a leap, though, to imagine the original custom was wearing actual feathers. I wouldn't rule out imitation feathers for my heroine's age, though.
As for the cap, it's again not a great stretch to imagine they had precursors that were simpler to design and make, such as headbands. One of my favorite manhwa (Korean graphic novels) authors, Kim Hyeh-rin, seems to have had the same idea. Her epic manhwa series The Fire-Sword (불의 검) is a semi-historical romantic and political saga featuring the Amur, a fantasy proto-Korean people. This is how Kim depicts the king of the Amur, Cheon-gung:
Doesn't he just scream "sexy antihero?"
So I think I'm justified, both by extrapolating from available records and from one of Korea's national manhwa icons, in imagining the noblemen of my heroine's people wearing headbands with feathers in them. Fun stuff, at least for me.
Dreamwidth entry URL: http://ljlee.dreamwidth.org/62548.html
My friends who have given me encouragements on the Soseono novel will be heartened to know that my obsession with the project continues apace. I've done a substantial amount of research on the politics of the period, at least in the internal politics among the heroine's people, so I've moved on to the daily lives including clothing, food, and architecture.
I've started on clothing first because it's the best researched and documented among the "daily life" topics. Goguryeoh in particular has a wealth of primary sources on these, because starting around the second or third century A.D. these people started painting elaborate tomb murals depicting everyday scenes like dancing, parades, cooking, fighting and so on. (In later periods the murals become more abstract and religious, closing this window into the material lives of their eras.)
There's a lot of research on specific subjects depicted in these murals. Recently I read an entire paper on men's headgear, for instance. Evidently Goguryeoh men wore caps, and noblemen wore feathers in their caps to denote their status. Feathered caps are shown in various murals including the following the third or fourth century depiction of a hunt.
Hunting scene from a Goguryeoh tomb mural in Jilin, China (click image for source)
My problem is that these sources, as with so much else, post-date my chosen period by at least three centuries. This means I need to extrapolate backward and imagine how these hats would have looked in the late 1st century B.C. and 1st century A.D. when my heroine was alive.
For instance, the hat-feathers in archeological finds are not actual bird feathers but imitation feathers made of leather or cloth. These have certain advantages over real feathers--not as perishable, more durable, can be styled to specification etc. It's not too much of a leap, though, to imagine the original custom was wearing actual feathers. I wouldn't rule out imitation feathers for my heroine's age, though.
As for the cap, it's again not a great stretch to imagine they had precursors that were simpler to design and make, such as headbands. One of my favorite manhwa (Korean graphic novels) authors, Kim Hyeh-rin, seems to have had the same idea. Her epic manhwa series The Fire-Sword (불의 검) is a semi-historical romantic and political saga featuring the Amur, a fantasy proto-Korean people. This is how Kim depicts the king of the Amur, Cheon-gung:
Doesn't he just scream "sexy antihero?"
So I think I'm justified, both by extrapolating from available records and from one of Korea's national manhwa icons, in imagining the noblemen of my heroine's people wearing headbands with feathers in them. Fun stuff, at least for me.
Dreamwidth entry URL: http://ljlee.dreamwidth.org/62548.html