Chimi: Ridge-end Roof Tiles

By the Editorial Team / With Shin Myunghee, Associate Curator, Buyeo National Museum

Exhibition Info. Buyeo National Museum September 18 - December 2, 2018

The Buyeo National Museum has continued to introduce the culture of Buyeo during the time Sabi was the capital of the Baekje Kingdom and has now prepared an exhibition on ancient ridge-end roof tiles called chimi.

Chimi refers to the decorative tile placed at either end of the main roof ridge of a Korean traditional building. It is installed at the end of the construction process and signals the completion of a building. For this special exhibition, the Buyeo National Museum brings together chimi from the Baekje, Silla, Unified Silla, and Later Three Kingdoms periods, including the oldest extant example. Jointly organized by the Buyeo National Museum, Buyeo-gun, the Buyeo National Research Institute of

Cultural Heritage, and the Korean Roof Tile Society, the exhibition is the first to be held on the theme of chimi. Featuring a number of restored tiles to the public for the first time, it also provides visitors the opportunity to compare the cultures of different regions through their roof tiles. Moreover, representing the first step toward enhanced understanding and research of chimi, it is an event of great academic significance.

Starting off the exhibition is an explanation of the origin of the word chimi and the introduction of this type of tile to Korea. The structure and manufacturing process of chimi and their practical function and symbolism are easily explained through texts and pictures.

To show how the tiles were actually used, the exhibition presents videos and an installation of a roof structure with chimi in place. Visitors who want to learn more can use the digital pads placed around the exhibition hall to look through all sorts of related information. Notably, the exhibition space is not a typical gallery but a big open space where visitors can move about freely and concentrate solely on the subject. On the first, third, and fifth Wednesdays of every month, the museum offers “Conversation with the Curator” to enhance public understanding of Korean traditional architecture.

This exhibition presents for the first time the oldest chimi of Korea after recent restoration. Excavated from Wangheungsa Temple site in Buyeo, this chimi has attracted scholarly attention from diverse fields. A number of fragments of ridgeend roof tiles are currently in storage at national museums around the country. In general, chimi is not discovered intact, so the number of chimi completely intact is small, and they are most often restored by assembling the fragments. This exhibition present the restored chimi excavated from Bunhwangsa Temple and a temple site in Inwang-dong, both in Gyeongju. In addition, the chimi from Hwangryongsa Temple, an item of permanent exhibition at the Gyeongju National Museum, and the chimi from Beopcheonsa Temple site, housed at the Chuncheon National Museum, are shown for the first time outside their collections.

The Buyeo National Museum hosted an international symposium on the theme of “Ridge-end Roof Tiles of East Asia” on October 19. The symposium served as a forum for scholars from Korea, China, Japan, and Vietnam to share new research findings on the subject of ridge-end roof tiles.