1950s Korean Vintage Wallpaper — Yungja (original / Herbalist)

Yungja was discovered in multiple locations — in Ganggyeong, South Chungcheong Province, and in a 1940s yeongdan housing estate in Bupyeong, Incheon. Its motifs are rounded flowers resembling sunflowers, daisies, and chrysanthemums, interspersed with fine fern-like leaves, grass clusters, and butterfly silhouettes drawn in the same hand as the blooms. The composition is an all-over scatter — directionless, evenly rhythmic across the whole surface. The color technique is borrowed from 19th-century woodblock and lithographic printing: a low-chroma silver-grey ink is laid down as background, and the flower areas are left unprinted, allowing the warm yellow tone of the pulp paper itself to become the flower color. This negative-space method reduced printing costs while producing a naturally soft, luminous palette. The design sits at the intersection of two historical forces: the international shift toward lightweight graphic florals that swept postwar Europe and North America, traveled through Japan, and reached Korea in the late 1950s — and the social shift of a country rebuilding after the Korean War, where the heavy damask and peony patterns of earlier interiors gave way to something lighter and more liveable. GOSATE’s reproduction digitally restores the original pattern, printed on premium non-woven base paper manufactured in Sweden. Available in two colorways: Original and Herbalist.