Headdress

This gilt-bronze headdress was made for powerful rulers. It is decorated with horns, wings, and hanging small disks. This headgear item is made of bronze plated with gold, also known as gilt-bronze. During the three Kingdoms period, it belonged to a powerful inidivudal in the small Kingdom of Bisabeol in what is now Changnyeong County in the south-eastern part of the Korean peninsula. Wing-like shapes decorate both sides of the hat-shaped item, and a tall horn-like object juts upwards from the top. Cloth fragments on the inside of the crown tell us just how beautiful the fabric would have been when it was first made.

The item was made with an openwork design, perhaps to allow the coloured fabrics behind the gold to remain visible. Small gilt bronze disks are attached all over the headgear, which would have produced a slight jingling sound whenever its wearer moved. Only those in the highest positions in society would have been allowed to wear items that brought together colour, lustre and sound like this.

— Museum description: Tokyo National Museum (CC BY 4.0), via ColBase / Japan Search.