1960s Korean Vintage Wallpaper — Sunok (original / White Duck)

Sunok was discovered in a 1960s hanok in Hwado-myeon, Ganghwa Island. Its structure is an all-over scroll — C- and S-curves crossing and branching to fill the entire surface with nearly symmetrical vine-and-leaf repeating units. This compositional grammar descends from Baroque and Rococo ornament and runs through William Morris and Victorian textile design: the all-over botanical that covers every inch of the wall. The leaves are simplified to outline and filled with fine lime-green shading and stipple work that reads as complex detail up close and as a soft, atmospheric ground from across the room. Over this ground, bright orange rounded petals and simplified circular flower-centers mark the rhythm of the vine — punctuation points on a dense surface. The color combination is the design’s defining Korean quality. Where 19th-century European scroll wallpapers rendered the same grammar in heavy reds, golds, and browns, with flock and embossing to simulate expensive textile, Sunok takes the opposite approach: flat, graphic, luminous. The lime-and-orange palette was a characteristic choice in early 1960s Korean wallpaper and packaging design — a practical decision to make narrow hanok rooms and urban housing interiors read as wider and brighter. The printing quality required to achieve it — fine dot screens, thin contour lines, precise color registration — demonstrates the technical level Korean printing had reached by the early 1960s. The result is a wallpaper that is structurally 19th century and visually unmistakably its own decade. GOSATE’s reproduction digitally restores the original pattern, printed on premium non-woven base paper manufactured in Sweden. Available in two colorways: Original and White Duck.   Roll size : 50cm by 10M Material : Non-woven paper Made in Sweden, Designed in Korea