Chengdu lacquerware by Jian Zhou

When you hear the term lacquerware, what do you think? Do you think about Japanese wooden crafts with a golden lining? Or wooden furniture with a mother of pearl carved into them used by the royal family? Yes, they are both lacquer ware; however, these beautiful decorations are only half of the work that goes into lacquerware making.

Jian and Bo are a young couple working in The Chengdu Lacquer Factory. They informed me that to finish a small lacquer bowl with silver decoration they need to work together on it for two to three months.

The long process includes two parts; lacquering and decoration. Lacquering itself has at least 17 steps. First carving a bowl with basswood or beech and sanding it down. Next, they use a ‘FaShua’; a brush made of human hair, to brush sap onto the bowl until all the little holes on the bowl are coated. Then the process involves layers and layers of lacquering, sanding down, drying, and polishing.

Finally, it could be sent to decorate. The decoration has yet another 5 to 7 processes; drawing, glueing, carving, texturing, rendering and coating. Once the decorating is finished, it will be sent back to have its last layer of lacquer, and finally, it will be polished with dark slate powder. Every step here is only performed by hand, even the brushes are hand made from straight black human hair, typically from young women. Lacquer ware making is an ancient craft that takes a lot of time to perfect.

Once an ancient Chinese capital in 900AD, Chengdu, a plain by the side of Tibet along the Yangzi River, was surrounded by Bamboo and woods. 3000 years ago during the Xi Zhou Dynasty, it held an extraordinary natural resource. Sap from the lacquer tree was collected from wood around the Chengdu plain. From there, Chengdu lacquer production reached a higher level of sophistication that before seen. Chengdu became an incredibly important region in lacquer production along the west of China.

In the Chengdu Lacquer Factory, these ancient techniques have been passed down from generation to generation.

Here Jian, Bo and ten other young crafters plan to spend their futures mastering these difficult techniques, from collecting sap from the tree to making human-hair brushes.

Months and months are devoted to the same object; bowls and boxes are crafted with love and care, ready for the world to discover them.

Photography: Sunsun Liu