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context: lacquerwork > technical
Colours
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an unusually colourful 17th Century box, for storing the texts of Noh plays |
The lacquer is almost clear (with a hint of brown), and was traditionally only tinted to black (from iron) or red (from mercury sulphide or iron oxide). Other colours came from sprinkling of metal dust/flakes, but some bright colours were unknown in lacquerware until the 20th Century. This technique is called maki-e: careful sprinkling of gold or silver (or other coloured dusts) onto the wet lacquer. Other decorative materials included mother-of-pearl, ceramics, abalone, pewter. I won't go into great detail on this, as there are whole books on the subject: to give a flavour, sizes of metal dust-to-flakes come in 31 standard grades.