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

This piece is chosen by those who understand that history is sometimes held most powerfully in a single expression.

“It smiles as though time had passed over it lightly, without ever taking its calm away.”

This wall work reinterprets the Silla sumaksae as an object for sustained interior viewing, and that shift in function explains the structure of the piece. A roof-end tile originally belongs to the edge of architecture: it completes the line of the eaves, faces outward, and meets the world beyond the building. It was made this way because architecture in Korea was never merely structural; it also carried image, rhythm, and symbolic presence. By placing the human-face tile within a wooden frame, the work retains that historical form while changing the conditions of encounter. What once belonged to the roofline is now brought to the height of the eye.

This matters because the human face is fundamentally different from the floral patterns more commonly associated with roof-end tiles. A lotus motif gives order, symmetry, and symbolic purity. The smiling face does something else. It introduces emotional reciprocity. One does not simply inspect it as pattern; one meets it as expression. The half-closed eyes, broad planes of the face, and slight curve of the mouth create an image that is neither fully amused nor solemn. Its ambiguity is essential. It allows the expression to remain open, and therefore alive.

The face has been preserved with enough irregularity to keep its architectural origin visible. It is not trimmed into a perfect plaque or overly refined into a polished relief. Its outline remains uneven, its edges soft, and its surface retains the plain authority of earthenware. This is important, because the power of the motif lies partly in the fact that it once belonged to a building. The smile is not detached from structure. It emerges from clay, weight, and placement. The tile therefore holds together two conditions at once: image and construction, humanity and architecture.

The frame changes that relationship in a measured way. It was not added merely for convenience, but to stabilise the tile as an object of contemplation. The square wooden setting provides visual order around a form that is asymmetrical and organic. That contrast is quietly effective. The face remains archaic and slightly off-centre, while the frame offers stillness and proportion. The result is that the tile can now be read slowly, almost as one would read a small devotional or commemorative image, yet without losing its material honesty.

There is also a subtle transformation in scale and intimacy. On a roof, such a face would have been seen from below and at a distance, as part of a larger architectural ensemble. Framed and hung on a wall, it becomes direct. The viewer now encounters the expression at close range, where the softness of the mouth and the inwardness of the eyes become more apparent. What was once public and outward-facing becomes inward and companionable. This is why the piece feels especially suited to quiet interior spaces: it carries the dignity of antiquity without becoming remote.

The enduring affection for this motif in Korea is closely tied to that accessibility. It is often remembered not for grandeur, but for warmth. The phrase “Silla Smile” persists because the face compresses historical distance into an immediately recognisable human feeling. That is also why the motif remains so compelling when re-presented in contemporary form. Its strength lies not in spectacle, but in the continuity of expression across time.

Seen in this way, the work is not simply a ceramic face set into wood. It is an architectural image made intimate. It was made like this so that the outward-facing language of the roof tile could become a lived presence within the home: calm, watchful, and quietly enduring.

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:

• Width- 18cm (7.08 inch)
• Depth- 1.8cm (0.71 inch)
• Height- 18cm (7.08 inch)

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