Body Materials of urushi (lacquer)
Wood, cloth (kanshitsu), bamboo, paper, cotton string, leather, metal , ceramics, plastic, glass, etc. In general, most urushi ware is made of wood, although I often use kakanshitsu made of linen.
Contents for this article
Work procedure
There are four types of wooden bodies.
Wooden bodies which are processed by using a woodworking wheel and rotating it.
Bowls, saucers,spinning tops, etc.
Wooden bodies which are made by joining two pieces of wood together without using nails or other joining tools.
They are assembled without showing the joinery on the outside.
Furniture, fittings, boxes, etc.
Wooden bodies which are made by bending thin wooden boards such as cypress and cedar into a circular shape and binding the joints with birch or cherry bark. Also called "wappa" or "mage-wappa".
Buckets, oval lunch boxes, etc.
Wooden bodies which are carved out of a block of wood using a machete, chisel, or chisel. Since there are no restrictions on the shape, free expression is possible. Expensive wood with beautiful grain is sometimes used.
Trays, spoons, plates, etc.
At Kagawa Urushi Lacquerware Institute, I learned a type of kurimono technique called sekisou.
In this technique, several sheets of plywood or other wood are pasted on top of each other and carved to form a shape. For example, to make a round box, boards with the unnecessary center portion hollowed out are stacked on top of each other, pasted together, and then formed with an engraver.
Plywood has the advantage of being less prone to warping. However, depending on the plywood used, it may be necessary to take measures to prevent the lines that were pasted together from coming out after urushi is applied and completed.
Kanshitsu
Body is made by attaching several sheets of hemp cloth with urushi, layering them, and hardening.
There are also techniques similar to this, such as attaching cotton string to a clay mold and hardening it with urushi, or hardening paper with urushi.
The advantage of this technique is that any shape can be expressed freely, and it is robust and resistant to changes in humidity and temperature. However, it is difficult to mass-produce, and the cost of materials is high due to a lot of urushi used, so it is rare, but many urushi artists adopt this.
For more information, please see this page.
Bamboo
I also learned the rantai technique, which uses nets woven from bamboo as a body, at Kagawa Urushi Lacquerware Institute. It is a wonderful technique, light, strong, and beautiful to look at, but it is becoming even rarer because of the difficulty of preparing bamboo strips by hand.
Rantai Tray “Hydrangea”
I created this piece as part of my practical training at the Kagawa Urushi Lacquerware Institute
Others
Urushi can be applied to a variety of materials, such as leather hardened with lacquer, metal with urushi baked onto it, ceramics, and industrial products made of plastic or resin coated with urushi.
When applying urushi onto glass, a "primer for urushi onto glass" is also available for stronger adhesion.
2024.05.14