Where is lacquer found

Small lacquer bowls can take many weeks to produce, so imagine the effort needed to produce a piece of this size. As Aoki herself says, most of lacquerwork is polishing! The creative possibilities of maki-e have inspired artisans from many disciplines, including artists such as Mariko Kobayakawa. This intricate necklace resembles a constellation of planets: you could stare at it for hours! This 18th century piece from the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston , used a variety of materials to create this aquatic design, including gold, silver, shell, horn and stone.

The inlays were delicately placed onto the wet black urushi, before being sealed in with further layers of transparent lacquer. If you would like to enjoy some lacquer yourself in person, take a look at this beautiful cherry-blossom design lacquer box , made in Japan, and available on Amazon.

Perfect for bringing a little of Japan into your home! Have you had a chance to see lacquer being made? Do you have any lacquer objects in your home? Let us know in the comments below! Any product suggestions are independently selected. If you buy something through our links, Japan Objects may earn an affiliate commission at no cost to you. View fullsize. Sake bottle, 18th century, The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Japanese Lacquerware in Europe. What is Urushi Lacquer? What is Maki-e? The Japanese Art of Gold Sprinkling. Decorated Lacquer Cases: Inlay and Inro. Traditional Maki-e Lacquer Designs. Lacquer inro with chrysanthemums, , British Museum. Modern Design: Lacquer Furniture There are endless possibilities for the use and decoration of lacquer. Avant-Garde Urushi : Lacquer Sculpture. Contemporary Craftsmanship: Japanese Lacquer Jewelry The creative possibilities of maki-e have inspired artisans from many disciplines, including artists such as Mariko Kobayakawa.

The group of eight represents all social classes and age groups, ranging from a member of the imperial family to a beggar, with each one of them being recognizable by their typical attribute, such as the flute, the gourd or the fan.

V as in Vernis Martin …is the term used for 18th century French lacquer work that features a high level of craftsmanship and perfection. This term goes back to the Martin family, a family of lacquer craftsmen who enabled French lacquer art to free itself from the East Asian model and turn towards subjects of contemporary court painting. They developed a very pale, extremely transparent lacquer on the basis of Zanzibar copal, which was called Vernis Martin. The Martin family used this lacquer as a final coat on their miniature works of art to not only protect the underlying oil painting, but also to make it shine.

W as in Wolfers, Marcel Belgian Marcel Wolfers was one of the outstanding artists of Art Deco, who earned his reputation primarily as a metal sculptor. Beginning in the mid s and into the s, he was involved intensively with creating lacquer objects using Rhus lacquer, which comes from Asia.

Like him, other European artists of this epoch, including British artist Eileen Gray and French artist Jean Dunand , had discovered Japanese lacquer and were enthralled by it. The treatise is the only known Chinese text that is dedicated solely to lacquer and its techniques. In , Yang Ming from Xitang added a preface to the Xiushi lu , indicating that the original text was written by master lacquerer Huang Pingsha, also known as Huang Cheng.

Y as in Yang Mao Yang Mao was a famous Chinese master lacquerer who had a workshop in Xitang in the Chinese province of Zheijang towards the end of the 14th century. During the Mongol Wars, his lacquer works were taken to Japan by fleeing Chinese monks, where they were greatly admired by the ruling class.

Like the works of his contemporary Zhang Cheng, Mao's works were collected in Japan and were elevated to ritual objects for the tea ceremony. Chinese and Japanese lacquer artists not only copied their style and technical perfection, they also frequently signed their work with the name of their role model.

Z as in Zeshin Shibata Zeshin was a Japanese painter and lacquer artist who was born in Edo, what is now Tokyo. He was outstandingly skilled in the traditional techniques of lacquer art, but also pursued new and innovative paths in art.

It was Zeshin who brought the imitation of rusty iron and patinated bronze in combination with lacquer to perfection, who revived forgotten techniques and perfected them by further developing them himself.

The inro shown here displays the exceptional talent of this important 19th century Japanese lacquer artist. It is reduced to tonal gray-black lacquer that is compacted to an image representation solely through its relief-like structures, such as the combed-in wave structure seigai and the confidently positioned gold elevations. The image depicts plovers flying over waves. Here a government school of lacquerware was founded in the s. Since plastics, porcelain and metal have superseded lacquer in most everyday utensils, it is today manufactured in large workshops mainly for tourists who come to see the ancient temples of Bagan.

At the village of Kyaukka near Monywa in the Chindwin valley, however, sturdy lacquer utensils are still produced for everyday use mainly in plain black. A decline in the number of visitors combined with the cost of resin, which has seen a fold rise in 15 years, has led to the closure of over two-thirds of more than lacquerware workshops in Bagan.

It developed from the painters of the Hanoi EBAI in the s and today is counted a national painting style with many famous painters. In the Ecole des Beaux Arts was established in Hanoi. This institution was to be the birthplace of the revitalised art of lacquer painting.

It was the first generation of Vietnamese students of the Indochina School of Fine Art during the s, who elevated the craft of lacquer painting to a truly fine art. Less interested in decor than their craftsmen predecessors, it was also these men who would begin a series of artistic innovations from which craftsmen producing purely utilitarian or decorative pieces would also benefit.

Creating images with crushed eggshell, painting pigment over gold and tin foil and adding sand to lacquer were all techniques developed by those first students. The metallic color lacquerware for which Vietnamese craftsmen are rightly famous, was first developed by artists experimenting with many innovative techniques. After the reunification , the art of lacquerware was slowly dying out in Vietnam. But since the s, the government has recognized it as a vital cultural and economic force and has encouraged the business community to invest in the craft.

As a result, we see a resurgence of lacquerware and a proliferation of lacquerware products from Vietnam. Barniz de Pasto es is a lacquer-like varnish technique originating in the Pre-Columbian era that is a specialty of Pasto, Colombia. It is made by chewing the resin of the Andean mopa-mopa shrub Elaeagia pastoensis into thin layers, and then painting it and applying it to a wood, metal, clay or glass surface using heated stones.

During this period, the process was almost always applied to dried gourds, especially to make the cups that Mesoamerican nobility drank chocolate from.

After the Conquest , the Spanish had indigenous craftsmen apply the technique to European style furniture and other items, changing the decorative motifs and color schemes, but the process and materials remained mostly the same. Asian lacquerware and artisans brought by the Nao de China also had an influence on the style and motifs of colonial Mexican lacquerware. Lacquer: Technology and conservation.

Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann. ISBN China: Ancient Culture, Modern Land. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.

Please change your browser's settings to enable JavaScript. Home Lacquerware. Lacquerware View all artworks View all artists. Description Lacquerware is the art of creating artworks and designs with the sap of the urushi tree.

Production 1 Shaping materials Wood is generally used for bowls, boxes, plates, and trays. Lacquered bamboo Bamboo is ideal for weaving into various forms and rantai is when it is used as the base for lacquerware. Dry lacquer To make kanshitsu or dry lacquer, a form is made with clay and plaster is used to make a mold of that form.

Maki-e Maki-e is a distinctive Japanese lacquerware technique that is said to have developed around years ago. Raden Raden is a decorative technique that uses the iridescent parts of seashells like abalone, turban shells, and pearl oysters, which are shaved very thinly. Chinkin For chinkin , which means submerged gold, a blade is used to cut lines or dots into a lacquered surface.

Kinma There are three basic variations of kinma : cutting lines, cutting dots, and a combination of the two. Choshitsu For choshitsu , dozens of layers of colored Japanese lacquer are painted on to a plain surface. Metal sheet inlay Hyomon or metal sheet inlay is the technique of stretching metals such as gold or silver into thin strips and cutting them into various shapes to create designs.

Eggshell inlay For rankaku or eggshell inlay, a design is painted with lacquer and tiny eggshell pieces are applied to the design. Urushi-e The decorative technique of using colored lacquer to paint pictures is called urushi-e which means lacquer painting. Kamakura-bori Kamakura-bori or Kamakura carving is when raised designs are carved into wood and layers of lacquer are applied onto them.