Takaoka lacquerware

The early shape of Takaoka lacquerware is tied to practical work in the castle town. Maeda Toshinaga built Takaoka Castle in what is now Takaoka City, and the town drew merchants and craftspeople who made armor-related items, chests, trays, and other daily goods. The same lineage includes lacquer work on furniture, so the craft’s first scene is a room with wood, lacquer, storage furniture, and meal trays.

The main forms are trays, box goods, and interior furnishings. Within those forms are confectionery trays, document boxes, compact boxes, and decorative boxes, each giving lacquer a different scale: a flat surface for serving, a lidded space for papers, or a small object handled at a table. In Takaoka, some elementary schools use Takaoka lacquerware trays for lunch, placing lacquered wood directly in a child’s midday routine.

Takaoka lacquerware is often understood through three named techniques: chokoku-nuri, Yusuke-nuri, and aogai-nuri. Chokoku-nuri builds relief by carving the wooden body and applying red or three-or-more colors of refined lacquer. Yusuke-nuri combines decorative methods such as stone setting, sabi-e painting, and foil painting. Aogai-nuri sets shell into the lacquer surface and finishes it with roiro polishing, giving the dark ground small flashes of shell.

Aogai-nuri rewards close looking because its blue glow comes from a very thin material. The work moves from wooden body preparation and ground coating to design drawing, shell cutting, shell attachment with lacquer, fine line engraving, overcoating, polishing, and repeated wiped lacquer. Shells such as abalone, yakogai, white-lip shell, black-lip shell, and Mexican abalone may be used; when a piece is cut to about 0.1 millimeter and placed over black lacquer, the shell can appear blue.

The work is divided by object, shell, and lacquer. A kijishi makes wooden bodies for boxes and vessels; an aogai craftsperson cuts and attaches shell; a nurishi handles lower and upper lacquer coats. The materials are specific: the lacquer is natural lacquer, and the wooden body may be katsura, tochi, ho, hiba, or wood with comparable qualities.

Current Takaoka lacquerware also appears at the scale of accessories, cups, trays, and vessels. Uehara Chihiro works at Shibata Shikkiten in Takaoka and uses aogai-nuri and chokoku-nuri in her pieces. Shiba Sayuri works with bamboo cups, trays that make use of leftover wood, and wiped lacquer, showing how individual makers carry Takaoka techniques into objects held at a table or worn near the body.