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Prized lacquerware takes time, skill
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Shortcuts don’t apply to making quality objects of lacquer, built up carefully in layers. Wang Jie covers the story.
Radiating a serene luster, lacquerware is an exquisite Chinese craft. As the earliest lacquer craftsmen, the Chinese have enjoyed its beauty for centuries. During the past hundred years, it has played an important role in the development of Chinese arts and crafts as well as having a large influence on the world’s art.
A red wooden bowl and a red vase unearthed in 1978 at the Hemudu Culture Site of Yuzhao, Zhejiang Province, proved that the Chinese had started to make lacquerware in the Neolithic Age.
Many people, even some young Chinese, mistake lacquerware as something merely covered in red paint. It is, however, a laborious process done by hand.
Ancient Chinese lacquerware was made using a natural lacquer obtained from a type of sumac, a small tree. The sumac needs to be about 10 years old to produce lacquer.
The liquid lacquer should curdle under damp conditions then become firm and resistant to heat, acid and alkali. The manufacturing process is so complex that it makes lacquerware costly.
During the Xia Dynasty (21st-16th century BC) and Warring States Period (476-221 BC), the variety of lacquerware objects made increased. Lacquer was used for furniture, containers, musical instruments and funerary objects.
In the Han Dynasty (206 BC-AD 220), most lacquerware continued to be red or black. It was more widely used, such as for plates, caskets, earrings, crates, board games and other daily necessities or decorative accessories. The craft became more delicate, and included using colorful paint, needle etching and decoration inlaid with gold.
Chinese lacquerware now has become even more delicate, and has acquired some different characteristics in different parts of the country. Those produced in Beijing are marked by their sumptuous style, while Fujian’s are light and especially resistant to high temperatures, corrosion and water.
Sichuan’s are delicately carved and famous for rubbed patterns. Pieces made in Yangzhou, Jiangsu Province, are known for a unique creative technique, whorl-filling, which uses shells that are made into sheets as thin as cicada wings and pasted carefully onto lacquer objects. During the process, treasures like crystal, jade, pearls and coral also are inlaid into lacquer furniture, tea-ware and calligraphy brushes.
Liu Guobing, a veteran collector, is enamored of the beauty of Chinese lacquer art.
“Today we talk about environmental protection, and I could say that utensils or objects made of lacquer are the most healthy and natural ones,” Liu says. “The reason is simple — they come 100 percent from nature.”
Liu says he didn’t have much interest when he first discovered Chinese lacquer art.
“They were everywhere in the gift shops at tourist destinations, those bowls and plates,” he says. “But it was after meeting one of my friends who majored in history at Peking University that I was amazed when I was introduced to the genuine article. He asked me to visit a lacquer artist’s studio to appreciate the real Chinese lacquer, as those sold at the gift shops are mostly fakes. Most of them are painted with red paint rather than natural lacquer.”
As a beginner, Liu came to understand that the general color of lacquer is black, since the original red hue of lacquer becomes black after oxidizing.
“Today you might see various hues of Chinese lacquer, including red, green, blue and white, but actually they are the result of mixing different minerals,” he says.
For example, it is still a tradition for Chinese lacquer artists to crush pieces of duck eggshell to achieve a white color, so if a white hue appears on lacquer, it usually looks crackled on close inspection.
The process of making lacquer is to cover it with a thick layer of natural lacquer and polish it to make it smooth, then cover it with different color of lacquer, and continuously polish it. “It takes a lot of material and time,” Liu says.
“Chinese lacquer art already reached an unparalleled status in the world,” he says, adding that lacquer was an important way for China to earn foreign exchange through export in the 1960s and 1970s.
Unfortunately, like many forms of traditional craftsmanship, Chinese lacquer art faced a tough time in the 1980s since most of the factories closed due to the country’s economic transition and many technicians took other jobs.
“Today some of the techniques are lost,” Liu says with a sigh. He cites as an example that sometimes a gold mixture needs to be applied to lacquerware, but this is done through a flick of the finger.
“In the past, only a young girl’s finger movement could smoothly and evenly deliver the gold mixture,” he says. “But today the technique is lost, though I heard that the Japanese were able to continue it since they studied some techniques in China in the 1970s.”
In recent years, art lovers have grown in appreciation of Chinese lacquerware.
“I plan to a open a showroom to exhibit my collection to the public in Shanghai,” Liu says. “Personally I prefer the lacquer art from Fujian Province, as they are more elegant and simple, catering to the aesthetic taste of urban people.”
Liu also points out that the price of Chinese lacquerware has rocketed in the past several years.
“I remember when I first bought them, it cost me several thousand (yuan), but now it is tens of thousands of yuan for a quality piece,” he laughs. “But I don’t think that this is the summit. Chinese lacquer still has huge potential market value when considering its long history and complicated technique.”
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