ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Azurite in East Asia: The Quest for a Chinese “Treasure” and Its Medical and Artistic Uses in Korea

• In Event: Minescapes 2: Mining for Blue

English Abstract

This paper examines how Chosŏn Korean (1392–1910) physicians and officials investigated, experimented with, and imported azurite from China—a substance that, by the eighteenth century, had become an object of literati fascination, a prized blue pigment for royal paintings, and a coveted medical “treasure” in the region. Korean intellectuals assembled knowledge of azurite’s mining, processing, and pharmacological use from Chinese and Japanese texts such as Song Yingxing’s Exploitation of the Works of Heaven, and combined these materials with reports from Korean envoys traveling to Qing China. Such knowledge practices shaped the connoisseurship of court physicians like Yi Sip’il (1657–1724), responsible for identifying and preparing azurite for King Sukchong’s eye ailments. Korean fascination also had diplomatic implications: the acquisition of “true” azurite—mined in China’s Sichuan and Jiangsu provinces—emerged as a key agenda in early eighteenth-century negotiations with the Manchu ambassador Akdun (1685–1756). At the same time, azurite—and related mineral pigments such as malachite and cinnabar—became central to the production of the most prestigious artworks of the Chosŏn court, including the iconic “Sun, Moon, and Five peaks” folding screens displayed behind the royal throne. Together, these developments show how a single mineral linked medicine, diplomacy, material expertise, and visual culture in early modern Korea.

Author

• Hyeok Hweon Kang, Washington University in St. Louis