Weaving and Farming Family of Baekje

This is a model of a farming family from Baekje.

If you see inside of the room, you will find a weaving scene on the left. Nowadays, fabrics are made with machines in factories, so you might find the scene unfamiliar. Just as Europeans domestically produced cloth by hand before the Industrial Revolution, Baekje people also made fabric at home by spinning fibers and using a loom.

Textile production was the responsibility of the women in farming families. The fabrics were used to make clothes or as a form of tax payment instead of grain.

Now look at the right side. The woman holding the ladle-like object is ironing the cloth. The iron looks very different from a modern iron. The people of Baekje with higher social class had their clothes pressed using this kind of iron.

Various weaving tools have been found from historic residential sites of the Baekje Period. These tools indicate that weaving was common, and performed in most farming families.