Carved lacquer

It is extremely time-consuming to produce, and has always been a luxury product, essentially restricted to China,[2] though imitated in Japanese lacquer in somewhat different styles.

[3] The objects made in the technique are a wide range of small types, but are mostly practical vessels or containers such as boxes, plates and trays.

[7] At first the style of decoration used is known as guri (屈輪) from the Japanese word for the ring-pommel of a sword, where the same motifs were used in metal, and is often called the "Sword-Pommel pattern" in English.

This style continued to be used up to the Ming dynasty, especially on small boxes and jars with covers, though after the Song only red was often used, and the motifs were often carved with wider flat spaces at the bottom level to be exposed.

[13] Lacquer was among the luxury products often given by the emperor as diplomatic or political gifts, or to the subsidiary courts of princes of the imperial house.

Japanese collections, often accumulated in temples, have a high proportion of the surviving early Chinese carved lacquer pieces.

[14] The Engaku-ji temple in Kamakura has an especially important group of pieces, some of which are credibly reputed to have been brought to Japan by its founder, a refugee monk escaping the fall of the Song dynasty to the Mongols in 1279.

[17] The artistic quality of carving was perhaps never higher, in all the main streams of iconography: Sword-Pommel pattern, birds, flowers and foliage, and figures in landscapes.

In the crowded, "exuberant and complex" designs with birds and plants, the forms overlap and curl in a more sculptural fashion, allowed by slightly thicker lacquer.

[23] As part of the internal tax or tribute system, about 5,000 workers from the south were required to work in the imperial workshops for terms of four years.

One of the best known pieces is a desk-sized table with three drawers in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, whose top has a typical imperial Ming design with a central dragon and phoenix, symbolizing the emperor and empress respectively.

[37] By the Qing period the repertoire of subjects for carved lacquer was essentially complete, but one addition in the Qianlong reign was a few pieces showing foreigners, mostly Central Asians bearing tribute though landscapes.

Usually the general large areas of the composition were carved down to the right level first, then the main forms followed by the details, and lastly the patterns in the backgrounds.

Modern works often use a number of shortcuts, including starting with carving most of the design in relief on the base wood, so greatly reducing the depth of actual lacquer required (this has been also been done in the Japanese kamakura-bori technique since around the 15th century [56]).

[60] Other types of lacquerware were widely used as tablewares, but the pictorial style of carved lacquer is less suitable for this, with intricate sunk corners that would be hard to clean of wet food remains.

[61] The interior of these is almost always plain lacquer, greatly reducing the problem of keeping them clean, and the food itself may have been wrapped or in ceramic containers.

A Yongle reign dish or tray 35 cm wide, probably made at the Orchard Factory and now in the British Museum, has a rare inscription indicating the use of the piece, as it declares it the property of the "Imperial Household Department of Sweetmeats and Delicacies".

Items for the scholar's desk, including brush pens with their matching covers,[64] were often made in carved lacquer, as were those for the male and female toilet.

[66] Craig Clunas suggests that in looking at pictorial scenes, we should be alert to possible connections in what may seem general genre scenes to specific major life events, as such pieces were used and reused among the elite to carry and themselves to be gifts on such occasions as a marriage, birth of a child, birthday, passing the imperial examinations, moving house, promotion and retirement.

Specific episodes from the history of famous literati or literature may be intended; in paintings such subjects are likely to be made clear by inscriptions, but not on lacquer.