DancheongStudioKorean traditional pattern vectors · Seoul
Dancheong, lotus and taegeuk — Korea's pattern heritage as clean, editable vectors
Motifs redrawn from the national pattern archive and the painted ornament of Changdeokgung Palace, delivered as SVG, AI, PDF and transparent PNG with seamless tiles and four colourways. Licensed for unlimited commercial work.
The bundles
Fourteen volumes of Korean pattern SVGs
Each volume is a themed library: every motif in original colours plus indigo, terracotta, jade-and-gold and grayscale recolourings, and seven to nine motifs built out into 2000×2000 px seamless tiles.
The first DancheongStudio bundle: lotus and flower motifs from temple ceilings and roof-end tiles, taegeuk and knot geometry, and painted dancheong components traced from Changdeokgung Palace — Juhamnu, Eosumun, Yeonghwadang and Jinseonmun.
Dragons, phoenixes, cranes, carp, butterflies and bats from Korea's national pattern archive, together with the stylised auspicious characters — 壽 longevity, 福 fortune, 囍 double joy — that decorated Joseon bedding, wrapping cloths and rice-cake stamps.
The largest floral set in the collection: peonies from Joseon screens and fans, chrysanthemum roof-end tiles, lotus roundels, flower medallions and lattice, plus the geometric vocabulary that frames them — tortoise-shell hexagons, circle lattice, vine scrolls, diamond rosettes and longevity medallions.
Forty cloud motifs — roundels, scrolls, drifting puffs, medallions and border bands — drawn from temple ceilings, palace beams and roof tiles, joined by sun discs, mountain-and-wave landscape motifs, a taegeuk roundel, flying cranes and a cloud-and-phoenix band.
Sixty-eight motifs from the things Koreans made and decorated: butterfly hinges and lockplates from wooden chests, iron door fittings, ewers and vases, folding fans and ribbon knots, strings of coins and the seven treasures, bead-bordered medallions and a taegeuk roof-tile end.
Seventy dancheong motifs from Gyeongbokgung, the main palace of the Joseon dynasty, kept in their original painted colours: lotus rafter-end roundels, cloud and longevity medallions, ceiling panels with dragon, phoenix, fish and double-joy motifs, the throne-canopy ornaments of Geunjeongjeon, brocade beam heads from six halls, bracket scrolls, wall panels and two hall name plaques.
Seventy lotus and flower motifs from the Culture Portal archive: twenty-five lotus roundels and rosettes seen from above, eighteen side-view blooms, buds and seed pods, six scrolling lotus bands, seven four-lobed quatrefoils and lozenges, and fourteen flower rosettes and sprays that pair with them.
Sixty-eight peony, plum blossom and chrysanthemum motifs from the Culture Portal archive: twenty-eight peony roundels, panels, blooms and sprays, eleven plum blossom roundels and branches, fifteen chrysanthemum medallions, sprays and vine panels, nine blossom, orchid and wildflower roundels, and five scroll bands.
Sixty-six vine, leaf and fruit motifs from the Culture Portal archive: seven honeysuckle roundels and medallions, seventeen scrolling vines, arches, corners and bands, nineteen leaf, fern and grass motifs, seven bamboo motifs, six pine and tree motifs, and ten fruit motifs — peach, pomegranate, bergamot, grape and lingzhi.
Seventy bird and crane motifs from the Culture Portal archive: twenty-eight crane and heron motifs — cranes in flight, standing pairs, cloud cranes, sunburst and wreath roundels — fourteen phoenixes, twenty-three magpies, roosters, kingfishers, sparrows and songbirds, four mandarin-duck motifs and a bird-pair border.
Sixty-eight fish, turtle and zodiac motifs from the Culture Portal archive: carp pairs, leaping carp and goldfish, hexagon-shell turtles, five tigers and the other zodiac animals, nine dragons, haetae guardians and masks, butterflies, cicadas, bats and deer.
Sixty-nine lattice and window motifs from the Culture Portal archive: seventeen lattices — woven, stepped maze, flower and quatrefoil fields, brick and coin lattice — fifteen window and wall grilles, eight tortoise-shell hexagons, seventeen diamonds, seven key frets and five interlaced knots.
Sixty-nine thunder, circle and taegeuk motifs from the Culture Portal archive: thirteen taegeuk — two-, three- and four-part roundels, octagon taegeuk and bagua trigram panels — ten thunder frets and maze wheels, nineteen circles, rings and wheels, eleven stars and crosses, eight dotted rings and borders, plus hatched panels, zigzag bands and wave curls.
Sixty-six longevity and fortune characters from the Culture Portal archive: thirty-four su (long life) motifs — key-fret and maze roundels, lobed and scalloped medallions, rice-cake stamp roundels, pillow-end panels and brush glyphs — eight su-bok panels and roof-tile wheels, eight bok (fortune) medallions and glyphs, plus wealth, many-sons, luck, peace and filial-piety characters and two seals.
A small seasonal set for the Year of the Goat: a standing goat from the national pattern archive, six 福 (bok, fortune) character designs in calligraphic, roundel and wreath styles, a 壽福 (subok) longevity-and-fortune lattice and a tiger guardian mask, with four seamless tiles built from them.
Pattern playground
Hover a tile to see it repeat
Six of the 127 seamless tiles, shown as the single 2000 px unit. Hover — or tap — and the same file repeats 3×3 with no visible seam. Every tile ships as SVG, AI, PDF and PNG in original colours plus three recolourings.
Small sets & papers
Single-theme sets from $3, digital papers and clipart
Mini vector sets pull one theme from a bundle — lotus, taegeuk, dragon and phoenix, auspicious characters — for a few dollars. Digital papers are 12×12 in print-ready JPGs; the clipart pack is 115 transparent PNGs for Canva and Procreate.
Free sample
Six motifs and a seamless tile, free
SVG · AI · PDF · PNG — one motif from each volume, same license as the paid packs. Delivered by Gumroad; leave your email there to hear when a new volume ships.
Background
What is dancheong?
Dancheong — literally "red and blue" — is the painted decoration on the wooden beams, brackets and eaves of Korean palaces and temples.
It began as a coat of mineral pigment that protected timber from weather and insects, and grew into a codified art of five colours and hundreds of motifs: lotus heads at beam ends, scroll clouds along the brackets, taegeuk discs on gates, brocade-like fills on every surface. Our Vol.01 dancheong vectors were traced from the Korea Heritage Service's published drawings of Changdeokgung Palace, a UNESCO World Heritage site in Seoul.
Motif glossary
What the patterns mean
Twelve themes, catalogued: what the lotus, crane, tortoise shell or 壽 character meant to the people who painted them, and which vectors carry them.
Questions
Frequently asked
- What file formats are included?
- SVG, AI (PDF-compatible, opens in Illustrator CS6 and later), PDF and transparent PNG at 2000 px for every motif; seamless tiles add 3×3 repeat previews and three recoloured tiles. No fonts, no embedded rasters — all paths are editable.
- Can I use the patterns commercially?
- Yes — unlimited personal and commercial projects, including print-on-demand, packaging, apps and client work. You may not resell or redistribute the files themselves, or register a motif as a trademark. Full license.
- Where do the motifs come from?
- Public heritage works from the Korea Heritage Service and the Culture Portal (KCISA), released under KOGL Type 1. We redraw, clean and recolour them; the required attribution is included in every download.
- Where can I buy?
- On Etsy (instant download, Etsy payment methods) or Gumroad (card or PayPal). Same files, same license.