Development of textile pattern design by M. C. Escher’s tessellation technique using chaekgeori icons

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to raise awareness of the uniqueness and excellence of Korea’s traditional culture among members of the MZ generation (Millennials and generation Z) and explore the possibility of utilizing archetypes of traditional culture in the contemporary context. To that end, this study develops and proposes unique contemporary textile pattern designs applying M. C. Escher’s tessellation technique to the formative characteristics and symbolic meaning of Chaekgeori icons. To develop the designs, this study reviews the previous literature and theoretically considers the concept of Chaekgeori, its formative characteristics, and Escher’s tessellation. After extracting iconsrelated to the themes, stylized iconographic motives were applied to geometric shapes to create repeating units. Then, Escher’s tessellation was applied to these repeats to develop twelve contemporarily reimagined textile patterns. To verify the usability of the developed textile pattern designs in products targeting the MZ generation, in-depth interviews were conducted with the MZ generation living in Jeju. The developed textile patterns were mapped onto the selected items to prove the applicability of the developed textile patterns to the items preferred by the MZ generation. The contribution of this study lies in the fact that it develops unique and contemporary textile pattern designs based on the formative characteristics and symbolic meaning of Chaekgeori icons and maps the designs of fashion items preferred by the MZ generation, thereby raising awareness of the value and excellence of Chaekgeori as a part of Korea’s traditional culture and shedding light on the possibility of using traditional cultural archetypes in contemporary contexts.