Japanese Lacquer
         
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Information of Japanese Lacquer   Catalogue page 1   Catalogue page 2
     
About one hundred years ago, products of Japanese lacquer were the very emblem of Japan, and japanese in lower-case letters meant Japanese lacquer at those days because many fine Maki-e, Japanese lacquer products were exported to Europe and U.S.A. So, you would often view fine Maki-e products at museum. In the present-days, Japanese lacquer would be classified into three groups, which are genuine Maki-e, housewares and so-called Makie-pattern item.

Genuine Maki-e - and screen-printed Maki-e
Japanese gold lacquer, Maki-e is Japan's traditional handcrafting technique which depict pattern or picture by pasting gold leaf and foil with using Japanese lacquer as alternates of adhesive, and its handcrafting needs several months, if not several years, as for luxury item. In short, there is nothing else that genuine Maki-e is art. And so, assuming that you want to buy genuine Maki-e product, that would be very expensive, maybe astonishing price !.

Genuine Maki-e can be classified into three categories, flat gold Maki-e, polished-out gold Maki-e, and raised gold makie. But, there is screen prited Maki-e else. As a matter of fact, an overwhelming majority of Maki-e which has been selling in Japan is screen-printed Maki-e, no if anything, it is not an exaggeration to say that screen-printed Maki-e is all. And so, please keep in your minds that you can not buy genuine Maki-e unless you visit craftsmen's studio in Japan, because you can never distinguish genuine Maki-e from screen printed Maki-e by only viewing JPG image on the internet.

Housewares - The genuines and So-called synthesised Japanese lacquer products
There are many Japanese lacquer products at every Japanese families, and you would think that "Japan is rich" because Japanese lacquer product is a little expensive. Though The Japanese use Japanese lacquer as housewares, as a matter of fact, most of them is so-called synthetic Japanese lacquer. So-called synthetic Japanese lacquer products are mass produced at a low price by coating acrylic acid resin paints after molding plastic (Example : ABS resin=acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene resin). Though they are lacking fine gloss and balmy smell peculiar to Japanese lacquer, they resemble the genuines in appearance.

By the way, a great deal of cheap lacquer-ware has been imported to Japan from China, Vietnam and Burma. Frankly speaking about them, however, its quality is ???. Supposing that you need Japanese lacquer products for any reasons, it would be better for you that you consider the quality without focusing on whether it is genuimes or not.

So-called Makie-style products.
As previously mentioned, to say nothing of genuine Maki-e, screen-printed Maki-e are pretty expensive. On the other hand, The Japanese love design like genuine Maki-e. So, numberless products which are designed like Maki-e with different patterns and colours are sold at Japan. As a matter of fact, no small parts of products which has been selling in the name of Maki-e in Japan are mere Maki-e style products. In other words, many, if not most, have no relation to gold foil. But, they may be the best products creating an aura of exotic allure and matching with Japanese-style in spite of inexpensive price.