Silla Earthenware Pendant Necklace: Human-Face Sumaksae and Gwimyeonwa Motifs

This piece is chosen by those who value the moment when history becomes intimate without losing its weight.

"The old roofline descends to the hand, and what once faced the open air now rests against the body."

These pendant necklaces are compelling because they do not treat Silla motifs as decorative quotations. They are made to preserve encounter. The human-face sumaksae and the gwimyeonwa originally belonged to architecture, to the outer edge of a building, where image and structure met the world. In reducing them to pendant scale, Kim Heon-gyu does not erase that origin. Instead, he changes the mode of address. What once watched outward from the end of a roof is now met at the height of the chest or held in the palm. The architectural becomes personal.

This change in scale explains why the two motifs are paired so effectively. The human-face tile is remembered for its extraordinary expression: a smile neither fully declared nor entirely withdrawn, calm enough to invite repeated looking. The gwimyeonwa works differently. Its force lies in its severity. In Korean architectural tradition, such fierce mask forms were attached with a protective logic, their very presence meant to repel misfortune and guard the threshold. One face welcomes through composure; the other protects through intensity. As a pair, they create a small but complete emotional field.

The choice to recreate them in Silla-style earthenware is central to the work’s meaning. Had these motifs been rendered in a lighter or more polished material, much of their authority would have been lost. Kim Heon-gyu’s firing process, using pine and sustained temperatures of around 1300°C over several days, seeks to recover not only the visual memory of ancient Silla pottery but its physical discipline. The resulting body is dense, hard-fired, and notably restrained in surface character. This is important because the pendants are not asking to be admired as glossy accessories. Their gravity comes from the fired clay itself, from the sense that they have been made under pressure, endurance, and time.

That material severity also stabilises the symbolic contrast between the two options. The smiling face does not become sentimental, because the clay keeps it grounded. The protective mask does not become theatrical, because the earthenware holds its force in reserve. Both remain archaic in the best sense: reduced, durable, and resistant to excess. Their smallness therefore should not be mistaken for lightness. They are small precisely so that their meanings may be carried rather than merely observed.

The pendant format introduces a further shift in ritual. A roof-end tile ordinarily belongs to collective space. It protects or expresses something on behalf of a building, and by extension on behalf of a community. Here that function is drawn inward. The wearer may choose the human-face tile as an image of composure and continuity, or the gwimyeonwa as a sign of protection and warding. It may also be worn less as jewellery in the modern sense than as a kept form: something to place in a bag, pocket, or wallet, where its symbolic role continues quietly through nearness. In that sense, the pendant does not modernise the motif so much as relocate its guardianship.

What is most persuasive in the work is its refusal to separate image, material, and use. The motifs are historical; the clay body is deliberately severe; the scale invites closeness. Each decision supports the next. The result is not simply a necklace with ancient references, but a condensed form of Silla presence: smiling in one instance, guarding in the other, and in both cases remaining close without becoming ordinary.

Dimensions:

• Human-Face Sumaksae
  Width- 4cm (1.57 inch)
  Height- 4cm (1.57 inch) 
  Depth- 0.5cm (0.2 inch)
• Gwimyeonwa Demon-Face
  Width- 3cm (1.18 inch)
  Height- 4cm (1.57 inch) 
  Depth- 0.5cm (0.2 inch)

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