빛나는 새해, 설레는 여행
새빛 맞이 Welcome the New Light 🌟
새해가 열리는 순간, 세상은 새로운 빛으로 물들고
그 빛을 따라 설렘 가득한 여행이 시작됩니다.
A Bright New Year, an Exciting Journey
Welcome the New Light 🌟
As the new year begins, the world glows with a new light
– and an exciting journey unfolds.
SOUTH KOREA. Shinsegae Duty Free’s just released New Year campaign turns to one of the country’s most revered traditional crafts – najeonchilgi or mother-of-pearl lacquerware – to explore how heritage materials can speak a contemporary visual language.
Titled ‘Welcome the New Light’, the campaign is created in collaboration with Dae-Hyun Sohn (손대현), the Republic’s first officially designated master of najeonchilgi and a key figure in the preservation and evolution of Korean lacquer arts.
Rather than presenting tradition as static or archival, the project reframes it as a living aesthetic system – one defined by light, rhythm, and material sensitivity.
At the centre of the campaign is najeon, the intricate art of embedding thinly cut shell – typically abalone – into layers of hand-applied lacquer. Unlike pigment-based colour, mother-of-pearl produces light through reflection and refraction, shifting in tone depending on angle, movement and ambient illumination.
This optical depth has long associated najeon with ideas of vitality, longevity and quiet luxury in Korean decorative culture.
Shinsegae Duty Free’s campaign translates these qualities into a visual composition that emphasises luminosity over form, and movement over ornament. Drawing from Sohn’s reinterpretation of the traditional Sipjangsaeng (Ten Symbols of Longevity) motif, the imagery expands the flow of light beyond the surface of the object, suggesting a symbolic threshold – an opening into a new cycle for the year ahead.
{Click on the YouTube icon to view the bewitching ‘Welcome the New Light’ video in association with Dae-Hyun Sohn}
Dae-Hyun Sohn’s career spans more than six decades. After apprenticing under the late Master Min Jong-tae in 1968, he became a central figure in sustaining traditional lacquer techniques at a time of rapid industrialisation. He was named South Korea’s first najeonchilgi master in 1991 and later designated as the Seoul Intangible Cultural Heritage No.1.
In 2025, he received the Seoul Cultural Award for Cultural Heritage, recognising his contribution to carrying traditional knowledge into the present.
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Since establishing Sugok Workshop in 1980, Sohn has worked to modernise traditional processes without simplifying them – maintaining the slow, labour-intensive nature of lacquerwork while allowing its aesthetic language to evolve.
His works are held in major collections, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and have been commissioned for diplomatic gifts, Vatican-related projects, and state protocol. Collaborations with global luxury houses such as Gucci, Cartier and Vacheron Constantin have further positioned his work at the intersection of heritage craft and contemporary luxury.
In a notable extension of this dialogue, the campaign incorporates generative AI technology developed in-house by Shinsegae Duty Free. Rather than reproducing or stylising traditional patterns, the AI analysed the luminosity, texture and rhythmic qualities of Sohn’s mother-of-pearl surfaces to inform motion and sound elements within the visual content.
The result is an abstracted translation of craft – one that treats intangible heritage not as an image to be replicated, but as a sensorial system to be interpreted.
Shinsegae Duty Free said the project raises broader questions increasingly explored in global design discourse: how can traditional craftsmanship coexist with emerging technologies, and how might digital tools expand, rather than dilute, the expressive range of heritage materials?
Presented across Shinsegae Duty Free’s physical spaces, digital platforms, and social channels, ‘Welcome the New Light’ positions Korean mother-of-pearl craft not as nostalgia, but as a forward-looking medium – one capable of engaging global audiences through light, movement and meaning. ✈
