Two-tiered Chest

Chaekjang is a book chest generally placed in a reception room. Since books were historically stored in a flat position rather than in an upright position, the height and width of a book chest was closely related to the size of a book laid flat. The chest was usually made two or three tiers, with a width of about 40 cm. It often omitted the kind of decorative wooden panels that adorned clothes chests around the doors, to allow the doors to be fully opened and books to be put into or taken out of the chest without being hindered by the wooden panels around the doors. The chaekjang shown here is a two-tiered book chest made of pinewood. The top board was rolled up like a scroll and supported by corner props to prevent it from warping downwards. The decorative wooden panels of each shelf contained an openwork modified design of an elephant eye for ventilation. Long, rectangular logs were attached to the edges of the door board and decorative wooden panels around the doors in order to reinforce the structure. The shelf inside the chest were not fixed and placed on the horizontal wooden bar of the chest to be removable.