By Kim Hyelin and Kim Minji
Icheon ㅣ Aug. 4, 2019

Ceramics is a leading handicraft in Korea as well as one of the nation's cultural assets. Several places in the country still make pottery by hand using a spinning wheel, one of which is located at the domestic hub for ceramics, Icheon, Gyeonggi-do Province.

Ye's Park, Korea's biggest crafts village, is a largest craft village with facilities for the production, display and sales of ceramics arts as well as those for artists' residence.


Weekend afternoons are packed at the park with many families. Though the streets are quiet on weekdays, they are most crowded in April and May, when the annual Icheon Ceramics Festival is held. The park also has four entrances and is divided into four parts: Kiln Village, Corridor Village, Star Village and Café Street. Trails allow visitors to look around the park, which is packed with distinct handicraft workshops, statues at street corners and ceramic objects.

A Korea.net staff writer visited Hwamokto Ceramics Workshop to try her hand at the spinning wheel (KRW 30,000). She used a kiln using firewood for heat to bake pottery, and began by patting chocolate-colored clay into a cylindrical shape and turning the spinning wheel to make a bowl shape.

Pressing the top of the cold and moist clay led to the creation of a furrow and when it got bigger, it amazingly started to take the shape of a plate. Even with minimal pressure applied, the side of the pottery collapsed, making it difficult to form a perfect shape. Workshop owner Park Jong-hwan, who is also a ceramics researcher, sat beside the writer to help her make the own pottery. She said she was especially satisfied with the finished look of the work since she created it herself.


Glass crafts are another highlight of Ye's Park, with the glass workshop Flux offering several programs for visitors. Here, the staff writer tried glass blowing (KRW 40,000), the process of making a vase or cup by blowing melted glass. Here, glass melted under high heat got scooped up with a blow pipe and coated with a colored piece of glass, and was then put into brazier.

After rolling the pipe, the glass started to melt and blend. After the pipe was removed and the opposite side was blown, the glass ball billowed. Repeating the blowing and billowing processes eventually resulted in a completed vase. Since the kiln's temperature was over 1,300C, the workshop was scorching hot but the fun of making a vase beat the heat.

Other must-sees at the park are the Cera Guitar Cultural Center, which offers guitar classes and ukulele-making workshops, and YaeJi Workshop, which specializes in crafts using hanji (traditional Korean paper).

kimhyelin211@korea.kr