Peony

Called the king of flowers, the peony (moran) means wealth, honour and high rank. In Korea it is above all a court flower: large folding screens painted with nothing but peonies (morando) stood behind royal wedding ceremonies and ancestral rites in the Joseon palace, and the same dense blooms were embroidered on bridal robes, wrapping cloths and the panels of wedding chests.

On ceramics the peony runs from Goryeo inlaid celadon through fifteenth-century buncheong stoneware — where a single loose peony brushed in iron-brown fills the whole jar — to the blue-and-white porcelain of the late Joseon kitchen. Painters often paired it with butterflies (long life) or with rocks (permanence), and in dancheong a stylised peony sits among the flower heads at the ends of beams.

Because the flower is large and layered it reads well even as a flat silhouette. The peony vectors in Vol.03 include full-frontal blooms, a roundel, stems for borders, and the ceiling and fan versions from Joseon buildings; one is built into a half-drop repeat suitable for fabric and wallpaper.