Urushi, Japanese lacquerware, is perhaps the oldest and most sublime of all the Japanese arts and crafts. Its history goes back more than 7,000 years and it is still vibrantly alive in the twenty-first century. It is practiced by craftsmen working in time-honored techniques and by modern artists forging the future. Valued for its utilitarian durability, Urushi developed into an incomparable art, adorning a objects from luxurious palaces, to lavish murals, to exquisitely crafted fountain pens. This book includes some fifty full-color illustrations of masterpieces honored by history and works by the author himself.--adapted from publisher's description.

Production, Distribution and Appreciation: New Aspects of East Asian Lacquer Ware, edited by Patricia Frick and Annette Kieser, focuses on various aspects of East Asian lacquer art ranging from the 2nd century BC to the 17th century. Recent excavations in China, the distribution of lacquer objects throughout the Eurasian region, the significance of lacquer ware in everyday life, technical aspects of lacquer production in Korea, and the appreciation of Japanese lacquer in Asia and Europe are analysed in six chapters by international experts in the field: Patricia Frick; Annette Kieser; Nanhee Lee; Yan Liu; Margarete Prüch and Anton Schweizer. Production, Distribution and Appreciation: New Aspects of East Asian Lacquer Ware is published in association with the European Association for Asian Art and Archaeology.

Dating back several thousand years, the art of lacquer is one of the most ancient expressions of Asian culture, and this publication provides an overview of the different kinds of methods and materials used in Cambodia, China, India, Korea, Japan, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam. The number of people employed in this ancestral art has fallen dramatically throughout Asia in recent decades, and this book considers the challenges to its survival as well as highlighting the importance of documenting past and modern procedures.