What’s in a name?
Tucked away in a small niche of the bookcase we find this combination of objects: books in casings, a small box, and six seals on top. Five of the seals stand upright, but one has toppled over, showing the red “face of the seal” or inmyŏn 印面. The presence of this so-called “hidden seal” or ŭnin 隱印 reveals something important about the ch’aekkado-genre. But before we look into that, there is an important question that needs answering: what actually is a ch’aekkado?
The name comes from a Korean word of Chinese origin, with ch’aekka 冊架 meaning ‘bookshelf’ and to 圖 meaning ‘painting’. Simply put, a ch’aekkado 冊架圖 is a painting of a bookshelf mounted on a folding screen or standing screen. This is different from most other forms of Korean painting, which are found on hanging scrolls or hand scrolls.
Back to the hidden seal. Painters used it as a trick to discreetly sign their work. Because, whereas in the West we use signatures, in East Asia people use personalized seals to sign documents. When we look closely at the seal, we can read 李應祿筆 “painted by Yi Ŭngnok”. Was a hidden seal discreet enough to elude the hawk eyes of the court? Probably not. Then how come a court painter like Yi used this technique anyway? Although Yi was employed by the court, he was allowed to produce works for others. That does not explain the signature, and scholars are uncertain what could have been the reasoning behind it. Perhaps it was a way for buyers and sellers to distinguish a “real Yi” from a painting by a complete nobody.