What’s on at the Handmade in Korea Fair?

The Handmade in Korea fair was on at the COEX in Gangnam this weekend. There were 600 booths with artists presenting and selling their work.

By noon the entrance to the exhibition was pretty hectic with lots of visitors wanting to have their picture taken in front of the huge ‘hand’. I liked the Bohemian mood around parts of the exhibition where artists were absorbed in their own painting and paying no attention to the visitors wandering by.   Most of the artists were from Korea but the exhibition was open to all countries and there was a ceramics stall from Poland, a wooden craft stall from Africa, and several unmistakably Japanese art stalls. Like this one….  This embroidery art stall from Japan was my favourite of all though. The strong colours really popped out amongst all the other booths. The artist herself fits in perfectly too!

 In some areas of the exhibition hall, coloured pencils hung down from the ceiling for budding artists to draw on the walls…I like the black and white theme happening here – particularly as the stall holder herself is modelling the polkadot-esque theme 🙂Many of the stalls had animal themes – dolls or paintings with animals – some were selling outfits for pets. Here’s another stall from Japan…The exhibition started at 10am. We arrived around lunchtime so some stall holders had settled down for lunch in their booths by then …

The busiest stalls in the whole exhibition hall were the ones selling craft materials for craft enthusiasts. This area was too much for me. For anyone interested in this I would recommend arriving by 10am …

By this point there was also a long line waiting at the drinks stall. 🙁 I decided it was time to go. But on my way out I stumbled over this quite unusual stall selling catholic nuns, priests, and angels all looking calmly out at the jostling crowds pushing by…