• Conservation Science in Museum
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• v.21
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• pp.17-28
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• 2019

The term jinjuseon(眞珠扇), meaning literally a pearl fan, refers to a fan decorated with precious stones for use in royal wedding ceremonies. This study examined a jinjuseon housed in the National Palace Museum of Korea (NPMK) which currently lacks jeweled ornaments. In order to determine whether pearls or other gemstone settings originally ornamented the fan,the surface and composition of the gray materials remaining on the washers were investigated and the fan was compared with other artifacts decorated using similar techniques. The analysis revealed that the gray materials visible around the round rims of the washers contain tin-lead alloys. The traces of folded nails suggest that soldering was not applied. The remains of the infill observed in other artifacts with bezel settings indicate that this jinjuseon in the NPMK collection was produced using abezel setting technique wherein pearls or other gemstones were affixed by filling cylindrical bezels with tin-lead alloys.