Stylogeny combining Burmese Parabaik Painting × Chaekgeori

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Style combination · Pairs well

Burmese Parabaik Painting × Chaekgeori

Both are court paintings on a folding support that took Western-derived shading and recession into a local convention; set a parabaik procession beside a chaekgado shelf to compare how each folds depth into panels.

From the research on Burmese Parabaik Painting (Konbaung Folding Books)

Mix them and make something Burmese Parabaik Painting Chaekgeori

PublicBurmese Parabaik × Chaekgeori1752 · 1776
A sample layout drawn from the recipe: shapes from Burmese Parabaik Painting, their arrangement from Burmese Parabaik Painting, the finish from Burmese Parabaik Painting. Not a real work, and not an image of either style.

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What each style brings

Each part of the design comes from the style with the stronger say in it, and each style gives at least two.

Burmese Parabaik Painting (Konbaung Folding Books) Chaekgeori & Minhwa Screen Painting

Type from Chaekgeori

Burmese Parabaik Painting avoids type as image: this is where the two pull against each other.

Colour from Chaekgeori
Form from Burmese Parabaik Painting
Composition from Burmese Parabaik Painting
Surface from Burmese Parabaik Painting

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The type

Open fonts standing in for each style’s own type, which is often hand-drawn or commercial.

Display · Chaekgeori

Public

Shippori Mincho; Chaekgeori used Haeseo (regular script) brush characters and Munjado pictorial ideographs built from emblematic motifs

Text · Burmese Parabaik Painting

Painted Burmese folding books of the Konbaung court and its monasteries. A long sheet of mulberry paper, folded like a concertina between lacquered or tooled-leather covers, carries a sequence of watercolour scenes in ruled panels, often with a short Burmese caption in a yellow band beneath: royal ploughing, elephant catching, barge processions, donations, the life of the Buddha and the Jataka. By the mid-19th century painters had added European shading, perspective and a horizon to rows of small stylised figures.

Bodoni Moda; Burmese Parabaik Painting used Burmese round script (Myanmar script) written in ink as captions in the band beneath each scene and Burmese and Pali in Burmese script for the texts of Buddhist and court parabaik

03

The colours

The ground and leading colours come from Chaekgeori, with a counter-accent from Burmese Parabaik Painting. The ink reads on the ground at 4.5:1 or more.

Burmese Parabaik Painting (Konbaung Folding Books) Chaekgeori & Minhwa Screen Painting

  • #efe3c8 ground · 36%
  • #2a2420 ink · 14%
  • #d9a23a accent · 18%
  • #b8392b accent · 14%
  • #2b4c8c accent · 10%
  • #2e7d6b accent · 8%

As CSS

:root {
  --ground: #efe3c8;
  --ink: #2a2420;
  --accent-1: #d9a23a;
  --accent-2: #b8392b;
  --accent-3: #2b4c8c;
  --accent-4: #2e7d6b;
  --font-display: "Shippori Mincho", serif;
  --font-text: "Bodoni Moda", serif;
}

Use it with care

Burmese Parabaik Painting (Konbaung Folding Books): Many parabaik show the life of the Buddha, previous Buddhas and Jataka stories and were made as acts of merit; treat these scenes and every Buddha image as sacred to Myanmar's Buddhists, and do not crop them into decoration, merchandise or tattoos, place them low or on footwear, or alter or parody the Buddha. The captions are real Burmese texts: have a Burmese reader write or check any caption and never fill the bands with invented script, which image models produce. Many court books left Mandalay Palace after the British captured it in 1885 (the V&A's 1882 manuscript IM.128-1918 was taken from Queen Supayalat's apartments), so credit each book to its court, place and present collection, work with Burmese scholars and painters, and never present a generated image as a historical parabaik.

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The two styles

Twelve bordered narrative panels depict a crowned figure in ornate Thai-style clothing with attendants, forest animals, boats, temples and Buddhist monks. Repeating yellow flowers and green vines frame the scenes, which are rendered in muted red, gold and green on a cream ground. 1752–1885 · Southeast Asia Burmese Parabaik Painting (Konbaung Folding Books) Painted Burmese folding books of the Konbaung court and its monasteries. A long sheet of mulberry paper, folded like a concertina between lacquered or tooled-leather covers, carries a sequence of watercolour scenes in ruled panels, often with a short Burmese caption in a yellow band beneath: royal ploughing, elephant catching, barge processions, donations, the life of the Buddha and the Jataka. By the mid-19th century painters had added European shading, perspective and a horizon to rows of small stylised figures. An ornate Korean-language reading app screen resembles a painted cabinet of books, flowers, ceramics, decorative boxes, birds, a tiger, and a sleeping cat. A large calligraphic title sits above four illustrated navigation buttons, surrounded by floral borders in muted red, blue, green, and gold. 1776–present · East Asia Chaekgeori & Minhwa Screen Painting Korean painted folding screens of the late Joseon period. Chaekgeori ('books and things') stack books, bronzes, ceramics and scholar's tools, often in a grid of bookcase compartments drawn with Western-derived shading and several viewpoints at once. Promoted at court by King Jeongjo, the genre passed to anonymous folk painters (minhwa), who also made munjado screens in which one Confucian-virtue character is built from emblematic pictures.

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More combinations

With Burmese Parabaik Painting

With Chaekgeori

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