The Kyungnam University Museum recently completed the preservation process of the Yu Han’ji’s book of prayer written in a L Sh style, designated as Korea's Treasure No. 1682. The L Sh Prayer Collection, which was returned by Yamaguchi Women's University of Japan (now Yamaguchi Prefectural University) in 1996, is one of the Terauchi Libraries (98 books 135 books, 1 axis, 1995). In addition, from the time of return, it had complex damage such as perforation, wear, loss, folding, face, contamination, and tear due to insect pests damage. Accordingly, the KU Museum carried out preservation treatment for 150 days from July 23 last year as part of the Cultural Heritage Administration's ‘2021 Cultural Heritage Repair and Maintenance Government Subsidy Project.’ Starting with scientific investigations through microscopy, chromaticity-pH measurement, and microbial activity investigation, the preservation process was carried out with detailed work to fully preserve and increase the value and meaning of cultural properties such as dismantling, cleaning, cover and paper filling. In particular, to restore the L Sh style of Yu Han-ji, a master of L Sh in the late Joseon Dynasty. The preservation team held several technical guidance meetings with experts related to cultural properties and made careful efforts to restore with fabrics as similar as possible. Based on the advice and suggestion, the work team used as similar fabric and paper as possible to reinforce the lost or weakened damage, and tried to reproduce the feeling of solid color as much as possible through natural dyeing. Meanwhile, the Yu Han-ji’s book of prayer preserved this time is to be displayed in the special exhibition room of the Hanma Mirae Hall of KU in the second half of this year. * L Sh is one of five main styles of Chinese calligraphy: Seal Script (zhu n sh ), Clerical Script (L Sh ), Cursive Script (cǎo sh ), Semi-Cursive Script (x ng sh ) and Standard Script (kǎi sh ).
