Lacquer Arts

Lacquerware is made by applying raw lacquer to bodies of wood, bamboo, cloth, and other materials. Making involves two stages, forming the body and coating and decorating it, with repeated applications of lacquer. Techniques include carved lacquer, mother-of-pearl inlay, gold painting, red carved lacquer, and incised gold; red carved lacquer is a form of carved lacquer.

The Hemudu lacquer bowl dates to about 7,000 years ago. The Hemudu site lies on the northern bank of the Yao River in Yuyao, Zhejiang, and was discovered in 1973. Its second cultural layer yielded an oval wooden bowl with melon-like ribs and a vermilion lacquer coating. A wooden bowl coated in vermilion lacquer, unearthed at the site in 1977, is held by the Zhejiang Provincial Museum; its coating combines natural lacquer with cinnabar. Lacquer fragments also survive from Shang-period Taixi in Gaocheng. Carved lacquer was made in Yuan-period Jiaxing, and government-run lacquer workshops existed in the Ming period.

The tomb of Zeng Hou Yi in Suizhou, Hubei, was excavated in 1978. It belongs to the early Warring States period, with burial dated to approximately 433 BCE or slightly later. Lacquerware from the tomb often has black lacquer grounds with vermilion painting and additional yellow. Its decoration falls into five categories: animals, plants, natural subjects, geometric patterns, and narrative scenes. Bodies include wood, bamboo, and leather, while making methods include hollowing, hewing, carving, and mortise-and-tenon joinery. The lacquer paintings recovered from the tomb are surviving examples from the pre-Qin period. A wooden tablet from Tomb 3 at Mawangdui shows that its occupant was buried in 168 BCE; lacquerware numbered 184 pieces in Tomb 1, 316 in Tomb 3, and about 200 in Tomb 2.

The Xiushi lu is a book on lacquer craft written by Huang Cheng, a lacquer artisan from Xin'an, during the Longqing reign of the Ming dynasty. Yang Ming annotated it in 1625, during the Tianqi reign. Its Qian division has two chapters on tools and materials; its Kun division has eighteen chapters organized by lacquer craft, including filled lacquer, mother-of-pearl inlay, gold-and-silver inlay, piled lacquer, carved lacquer forms such as red and rhinoceros-skin carving, incised gold, and incised-color decoration. Red carved lacquer uses bodies of gold, silver, tin, or wood, coated with successive layers of red lacquer: eighty or ninety layers at the lower end and one or two hundred at the higher end. A design is drawn when the lacquer is partly dry, then carved into patterns. The Palace Museum holds an octagonal dish with a waterfall-viewing scene made by Yang Mao and a round dish with gardenia decoration made by Zhang Cheng.