context: lacquerwork > technical

Variety of techniques

a negoro bowl

There were countless techniques to make the most of these few basic ways of applying the materials. One that I find particularly appealing is called negoro, where red lacquer is applied over black on much-used tableware (bowls, trays, cups), particularly in monasteries, where this started. With wear, over time, the black starts showing through in unpredictable and uneven ways.

I love this idea of the wear and damage, the changes of time, being part of the work of art, something that adds to it and is inseparable from it, not an opponent of the art object. Of course once people decided it was Art they took the items away from actual real use, and froze the change process (these objects are on pedestals and in glass cases now). It seems to me that we are losing the thing that made these items like nothing else, that made them art, as soon as we decide that they are Art.

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