Silla Earthenware Roof-End Tile (Sumaksae): Smiling Human Face Motif

This piece is chosen by those who understand that the most lasting images are often the least insistent.

“The smile does not seek attention; it simply remains, and in remaining becomes unforgettable.”

This earthenware sumaksae, or roof-end tile, takes the form of an inmyeonwa — a human-faced tile image long associated with the visual imagination of Silla. Its broad public recognition rests not on monumentality or ornament in the usual sense, but on expression. It was made this way because a human face can hold a cultural presence that geometry alone cannot. In place of the more expected lotus-patterned roof tile, this form offers a countenance: calm, faintly amused, and quietly inward.

That decision changes everything about how the object is read. A lotus motif organises a surface through repetition and symbolic purity. A face, by contrast, introduces encounter. One does not merely observe it; one meets it. The narrowed eyes, rounded planes of the cheeks, and subtle upward turn of the mouth create a smile that is neither fully declared nor withheld. This ambiguity is central to its power. It allows the expression to remain open, returning something different with each viewing: serenity, gentleness, irony, repose.

The form is also shaped to preserve a sense of origin. The tile is not regularised into a perfect decorative plaque. Its edge remains uneven, its mass slightly asymmetrical, and this matters. It reminds the viewer that the work belongs to the world of architecture — to the end of a roofline, to the material dignity of fired clay, to the outer skin of a building. The face therefore does not float free as an image alone. It remains tied to structure, weather, and surface.

This connection between image and architecture helps explain why the piece carries such unusual emotional weight. A roof-end tile belongs to the threshold between protection and exposure: it completes the roofline, faces outward, and meets the world. To place a human face there is to let architecture itself acquire expression. The building is no longer mute. It greets, watches, and endures. That may be one reason this motif has remained so deeply loved in Korea. It condenses monument and humanity into a single form.

Its later reputation as the ‘Thousand-Year Smile of Silla’ is revealing. The phrase does not celebrate grandeur. It celebrates continuity of feeling. Across centuries, what survives most vividly is not only the object’s antiquity, but the extraordinary accessibility of its expression. The smile is not heroic or sacred in a distant sense. It is close to human scale. It allows tenderness to become historical memory.

The addition of a hanging cord gives the work a new mode of presence without emptying it of its original logic. Displayed on a wall, it retains something of the outward-facing role it once held in architecture. Yet the shift in scale transforms the encounter. What was once elevated at the end of a roof may now be met directly, at the height of the eye. In this new setting, the tile becomes less a remnant and more a companionable image — still archaic, but no longer remote.

What finally makes this object so compelling is the clarity of its artistic intention. It was made this way because expression could carry what ornament alone could not: memory with warmth, antiquity with approachability, and dignity with ease. The result is not merely a historic motif rendered in clay, but a face that continues to hold time gently.

Historical Note
Face-patterned roof-end tile from Silla, excavated at Yeongmyosa Temple Site in Tapjeong-dong, Gyeongju. The original is designated Treasure No. 2010 in Korea and is widely known as the ‘Smile of Silla’ or ‘Thousand-Year Smile’.

Dimensions:

• Small
  Height- 13cm
  Width- 13cm
  Depth- 2cm
• Medium
  Width- 17cm (6.69 inch)
  Depth- 2cm (0.79 inch)
  Height- 17cm (6.69 inch)

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