Put your worth where your headband is

There is actually a great difference between a high-status manggŏn and one of lower status. When first imported from China as a head net, the manggŏn, (wangjin in Chinese) were made from silk. We can deduce this from the hanjaChinese characters composing this word 網巾 which means “silk cloth”. Afterward, the material changed based on the status of the wearer.https://ncms.nculture.org/market/story/3468 The lower ranking people wore a manggŏn made of horsehair. A much higher-ranking person had manggŏn made of human hair. Because human hair was perceived as part of the ancestors' dowry, it was so precious that it would only be used to repair the headband of a high-ranking person. http://encykorea.aks.ac.kr/Contents/Item/E0017846 https://ncms.nculture.org/market/story/3468

The ornaments placed on the headband can be made of different materials. Typically they were made of wood, stone, or even tortoiseshell. Wood was used for the lower class and tortoiseshell for the highest class. Our manggŏn was made of horsehair, with a middle ornament made from tortoiseshell, and decorated with jade.

What does this tell us about the status of its wearer? The rarer the materials, the higher the status. To put it simply, the owner of this manggŏn was probably of high status. The material of the ornaments was very strictly defined: jadeite for first-rank officials, gold for second-rank officials, and jade for third-rank officials and above. As we can see, this specific manggŏn is made with rare materials such as tortoiseshell and jade and was therefore probably worn by a person of high status.

We can also deduce this from the donor of the object to the museum. Our object came to the Museum Volkenkunde through Friedrich Kraus (1848-1916) in 1888.Masterpieces from the collection of the Gyeonggi Regional Museum, p. 208 Kraus was on a mission to Chosŏn to lead the establishment of the Royal Korean Mint. He agreed to donate many objects in order to help advance ethnographic research. His donations included everyday objects as well as court objects, reflecting his close connections to the Chŏson court. Our manggŏn here is a bit of both worlds: while worn every day, its owner would have had close links to the court.