Box for Official Seal

last half of 18th century

Very large metal or jade seals were used in the Joseon period to put the stamp of approval on state documents. The seals themselves became emblems of authority, displayed at meetings and handled with great care. This is the outer storage and carrying box for a seal of the State Council, or Uijeongbu, a board of the king’s highest-ranking advisors. Nesting inside would have been a lacquered wood box that held the actual seal. This is one of the objects that the Museum’s first curator of Ethnography, Stewart Culin, acquired during his groundbreaking expedition to Korea in 1913.