[KOREAN LUXURY] Prouna, creating art for the table

CHEONGJU, North Chungcheong Province -- A middle-aged woman sits in a quiet room, porcelain napkin ring in one hand and a set of tweezers delicately holding a Swarovski crystal in the other. She carefully glues the crystal down, the first of dozens that will decorate the ring.

She is one of just eight employees who are trusted to the task of decorating napkin rings, tea sets and dinner chinaware with crystals for Prouna Jewelry, the ultra-luxe line of bone china tableware from Hankook Chinaware.

Launched in 2004, Prouna was created by Korea‘s oldest chinaware company Hankook Chinaware to target the European luxury chinaware market with products combining flawless quality and artistic design. Its name combines the words “profound” with “una,” meaning “only one.”

With a teacup and saucer set retailing at $200-300, dinner plates at similar prices and vases up to $20,000, Prouna’s products are designed for the elite. On Prouna pieces, porcelain swans and deer perch atop teacups and flowers bloom in an array of dazzling colors and shining crystals. Each piece comes with a certificate of authenticity.

They have reached their mark, crafted exclusively for events like royal weddings in Dubai and the 60th Diamond Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II as well as for international events such as the 2005 APEC and the 2010 G20 Summit. Prouna is also the porcelain of choice for the so-called “seven-star hotel” Burj Al Arab in Dubai.

The brand has exported pieces to 60 countries worldwide, with 40 countries receiving regular shipments. Top markets include the U.S., Turkey, the U.K., Iran, and Russia, according to Brian Lee, a sales manager with Hankook Chinaware.

At wholesale prices, Prouna is equivalent, if not more expensive, than other well-known luxury chinaware brands such as Wedgwood in England.

“Other luxury brands like Wedgwood and Lenox often outsource their production to factories in countries with low labor costs, such as China or Southeast Asian countries,” said Lee. “All of Prouna’s products are made in Korea.”

Flawless hand-crafted quality

All of Prouna‘s products are produced here at Hankook Chinaware’s factory in Cheongju, North Chungcheong Province to ensure the highest quality.

Their products are all categorized as fine bone china, containing over 50 percent natural cow bone ash imported straight from the U.K. The same stringent standards that are applied to all Hankook Chinaware‘s pieces, which led the company to supply prestigious clients such as Cheong Wa Dae and the Vatican, apply to Prouna as well.

“Most people don’t know that the grade of bone china is determined by the level of bone ash mixed into the clay,” Lee told The Korea Herald as he held out a clump of the ash.

“Other brands can claim to be bone china if they just have 10 percent, or 30 percent bone ash. But all of our products are 50 percent or more bone ash,” he said.

The natural bone ash gives the china a creamy, translucent surface while making it strong and light, and able to retain heat for long periods of time.

After being carefully cut and manually pieced together, the pieces are hand-brushed with gold and decorated with crystals by hand.

“The amount of human labor that goes into creating each Prouna piece is amazing,” said Park Byung-joo, a spokeswoman for the company. According to an employee at the factory, it takes approximately one hundred hands to complete the process of creating a Prouna piece.

Because of the labor-intensive nature of the work, Prouna only creates about 150,000 pieces each year, with decorators often extending hours when working on exclusive or custom projects for special events abroad.

Prouna is not the first brand to put crystals on chinaware. According to Lee, there were four or five European countries that sold bejeweled tableware -- but many of their products did not hold in the market because the jewels would easily fall off.

“Our secret is in the glue, which we mix ourselves,” he said. “When representatives from other companies come to tour our factory, there’s very little they can take away simply by watching the creation process. Our competitiveness is in the craftsmanship of our employees, who work here over 20 years, and in the formulas we use for the clay and glue.”

Prouna’s chinaware was put through vigorous tests by potential buyers and rivals, including being washed eight hundred times in a high-powered dishwasher with harsh detergent.

“Even the glaze came off the plates, but the crystals all stayed,” recalled Lee.

Integrated production, flexible designs

Although Prouna is currently available at standalone stores and department stores abroad, the brand is perhaps best known for is its custom-made lines, such as the Diamond Jubilee collection created for the British queen, which was made with 400 Swarovski crystals forming a diamond on the plates and cups and 24-karat gold plating.

This type of customization is one of Prouna‘s biggest strengths. As a part of Hankook Chinaware, Prouna can take advantage of Hankook’s vertically integrated system, which includes everything from design to final decorations.

“Most companies contract out individual steps in making a customized product, which means that clients have to go through different parties when they want a particular design,” said Ha Gurl-yong, an executive with the company.

“With Prouna, clients can see samples of different designs right away and make changes quickly, which is what makes us so competitive,” he said.

Previous custom designs have included an ancient Egypt-inspired collection for a royal wedding in Dubai. Lee said that after events with custom-made tableware, Prouna received calls from department stores saying that customers had come in looking for those exclusive designs.

“Sometimes, our designs unexpectedly became a status symbol,” he said. “For a customer to look for a particular design, he or she had to have been at the VIP event where our china had been used.”

By Won Ho-jung (hjwon@heraldcorp.com)