Think about it for a minute.
The difficulty of photographing a black, glossy, 3-dimensional object without including your own reflection.
It is not just yourself, and jet black reflects the fluorescent light on the ceiling as well as everything else in the room.
If we want to film the lacquered work perfectly, it is necessary for us to build a very elaborate set.

This requires a technique in which you somehow apply light without allowing that light to be reflected.

Even people generally regarded as still life professionals have a struggle with lacquered works.

Today, I went to a studio in Ikebukuro to take photographs for a private exhibition.

I asked Nakajima-san to assist with the photography

Nakajima-san is a photographer who specializes in the craft field, in particular capturing lacquered works.

In the past, I photographed the works of teachers whom I considered to almost have the status of superstars.

Every year they photographed for the Tokyo National Museum and Museum of Modern Art.

On this occasion, I had one special request in regard to the photographing of my work.

“Let’s go with a black back”

A black back means setting the background color for the photography to black.

Often such works are photographed with a gray background and the pictures of works that we are used to seeing in pictorial records are nearly all gray. 

There are several risks involved in photographing with a black background.

Firstly, if the work is black and the background is black, this will detract from some of the attractiveness of its blackness.

It was not only me facing this problem, but was also mentioned by the photographer Nakajima as well.

Although he had been photographing with a gray background for decades, and was a top professional doing so, he responded to my difficult request.

He changed the position of the lighting several times and managed to capture it in a way that brought out the differences in the black. What a pro!

Another thing I was concerned about was that if photographed with a black background, the work would tend to look old.

You never know how these things are going to work until you try them and when photographed with a black background, it gave a really heavy impression.

It needed to have a positive image, such as having a sense of class or  profoundness, but there was also a danger that the image would be of something dark or ancient.

As far as I was concerned, it was the photograph that I was expecting, and I felt that the image I had of my own product was faithfully reflected in the photograph.

I am looking forward to seeing how this product group photographed against a black background show up.

Gold lacquered box

“Zipangu” box inside.

The entire photograph has been uploaded to our FaceBook page.

During the peak of my activity producing works for my first exhibition, there was one work that was giving me a lot of trouble.

The fact is that as I like to present as many works as possible during a personal exhibition, the work I created separately for a general exhibition caused me no end of problems.

However, there was one rule that kept driving me forward.
“Once you start, keep going”
These words…
I had heard them from so many teachers.
Professor Murose, Professor Hayashi, and Professor Nemoto, to whom I owed so much.
These and so many other of my teachers taught me “Once you start, keep going”.
There are not so many rules that I need to follow, but I think this one -“continue to exhibit without resting” is one of the most important, and I have also tried to produce works in this serious way.

In regard to its expression, in recent years my style has become more settled, and this work includes color elements to express the gold and black.

Until now, I have created works that use shells and although the effect of the shells is to add shine to the works, I had been unable to use them for color expression.

In other words, I was able to produce this shine on a color surface.

In this work, I think that the blue light released from the shine of the stars becomes the color for the expression.

By being able to produce this expression, I will now be able to express colors in my works moving forward.
I have been able to make a step forward from the style in which gold and black are the main monotone

Technically, I felt that this was a certain arrival point and I was able create works using multiple types of materials, such as gold lacquer, “Hyomon”(literally “plain text”), and mother-of-pearl (two types) with a certain degree of completeness.

Additionally, the true matching of molding and expression created a work that was beautiful as a whole.
The theme was a reverend expression of space.

I was curious how physicists and mathematicians lived.
It seemed that their major issue was how to elucidate the puzzle of space.
Creating mathematical problems that could not be solved in 100 years, and becoming mentally damaged in an attempt to solve it, their challenge, seen from the outside, could only be viewed like that of an artist.

During the peak of my activity producing works for my first exhibition, there was one work that was giving me a lot of trouble.

The fact is that as I like to present as many works as possible during a personal exhibition, the work I created separately for a general exhibition caused me no end of problems.

However, there was one rule that kept driving me forward.
“Once you start, keep going”
These words…
I had heard them from so many teachers.
Professor Murose, Professor Hayashi, and Professor Nemoto, to whom I owed so much.
These and so many other of my teachers taught me “Once you start, keep going”.
There are not so many rules that I need to follow, but I think this one -“continue to exhibit without resting” is one of the most important, and I have also tried to produce works in this serious way.

In regard to its expression, in recent years my style has become more settled, and this work includes color elements to express the gold and black.

Until now, I have created works that use shells and although the effect of the shells is to add shine to the works, I had been unable to use them for color expression.

In other words, I was able to produce this shine on a color surface.

In this work, I think that the blue light released from the shine of the stars becomes the color for the expression.

By being able to produce this expression, I will now be able to express colors in my works moving forward.
I have been able to make a step forward from the style in which gold and black are the main monotone

Technically, I felt that this was a certain arrival point and I was able create works using multiple types of materials, such as gold lacquer, “Hyomon”(literally “plain text”), and mother-of-pearl (two types) with a certain degree of completeness.

Additionally, the true matching of molding and expression created a work that was beautiful as a whole.
The theme was a reverend expression of space.

I was curious how physicists and mathematicians lived.
It seemed that their major issue was how to elucidate the puzzle of space.
Creating mathematical problems that could not be solved in 100 years, and becoming mentally damaged in an attempt to solve it, their challenge, seen from the outside, could only be viewed like that of an artist.

I was really pleased with this work, and it was a breakthrough work in many senses of the word. However, I did not believe that such a small work would actually receive a prize.

The East Japan Branch Exhibition is an exhibition in which other sections also exhibit, and my received a certain degree of praise from the judging professors in other departments as well.

I was frankly amazed when told of the award.

A previous tweet caused a serious resonance.
This was my thinking on how to determine the price of a job.

In my 20s, I created a work out of lacquer that was a lid made for a metalworker teacher, who was a human natural treasure.
“Make it any way you like.”
“Say a price that will make you want to do it next time too”
Then, whenever I delivered the work, I would receive more than I asked for,and he would treat me to an “unagi” (eel) meal and say “to give you vitality”.

At the time, what I thought was really important and easy to understand was that you should decide on a way of setting the price yourself so that you will want to do it next time as well.

This is a practical lesson that will allow you to be active over a long period, and I really felt the love.

When I was living in Kita-ku in Tokyo, a metalworking teacher, Professor Hoseki Okuyama, a real national treasure, had a studio nearby.
During a certain period, I got to know Professor Okuyama and was allowed to exhibit in the “Kita-ku crafts exhibition” sponsored by the Professor.

The Professor has the nature of a craftsman as well as the sense of a creator, and, above all, is a very kind man.

He would often invite me to “come out for a drink”, and would take me to eat foods that would invigorate me, such as sushi or “suppong” (Chinese soft-shelled turtle).

In terms of my work as well, he told me “I will give you solid support”,
I think that there was no pressing need, but in order to create a job for me to do, he said “For this work, I want to make a pitcher, so could you please make me a lid?”

In my 20s, I had no idea how to price jobs, and I simply considered it an honor and was delighted that this national treasure Professor had asked me to make the lid for his work.

When I went to deliver the product, I said
“I learned a lot. 15,000 yen please”, to which he replied strongly
“A job is worth more than that!”. He would not accept the delivery note that I first proffered and gave me much more than the amount that I first asked for.

In addition to that, he gave me car fees and treated me to a meal, saying “let’s go and eat unagi (eel)”.
Saying this, he gave me lots of different work.

What he would always say was
“Always say a price at which you will want to do it again next time”.
When I first started working, I found it hard to price my own work and sometimes set it too cheaply.

I felt like I was stealing somebody’s money .
However, receiving the practical advice from Professor Okuyama, I gained in confidence.

Professor Okuyama is still putting painstaking effort into his works, which you can see at traditional Japanese craft exhibitions.

His past works can be viewed here.

This can be said to be my “coming of age” work
The gold-lacquered amber jewelry box “Time”

I created this work when I was about 31 years of age and it won a prize at a Japanese traditional lacquer exhibition.

So the title is “Time”….、
I wanted to create a work that depicts light engraved in the memory and memory like a human heartbeat.
This box expresses light meeting in the middle moment by moment, the light of space, the heartbeat of human beings, and the image of light continuing endlessly from one initial departure point.

There is light that only hits our eyes after spending a long time in space, and the light we see has been on a journey of tens of thousands of years. By that time, the star that originally created that light may no longer exist.

Don’t you feel that this is a little strange?
Even if there is a time lag, the unit seems too big for us ot understand.
But there is definitely light at the central point of this time lag, and the scene that created this light still remains.

And then there is us who come to an end.
This is also a little strange.
Although the light source is no longer there, light remains and continues its journey.

Us living beings hold feelings we cannot decribe and thoughts we cannot express, but our lives are around 100 years at the longest.

Although this cannot be seen by anyone else, this is definitely a feeling that we have.

Light and thought do not have a shape
but they are definitely there.
But they disappear within time,
moment by moment.
。
No, they just appear to be disappearing.
If it were possible to give them a form, I thought
“Ah! I might be able to do that with lacquer” and
decided to create this.

Homemade lacquer from Tottori that is starting to reveal its true value
The truth is that when I was in Saitama, this was not a lacquer that was easy to use. When I passed it to Professor Murose (living in Tokyo) and asked for his impressions, I was told “the first lacquer dries well, but it is quite slow to prime. I wonder why that is”.
It was a lacquer that required both a knack and skill to be used in the Kanto winter.
My innermost thoughts
“The quality of this lacquer which I have nurtured for 13 years and finally been able to adopt…maybe it was reckless to try and grow lacquer in Tottori…”
My feelings were a mixture between panic and regret.
When you try to grow lacquer, it takes at least 10 years to know the quality of what you have grown, so it is a real shame if the result is bad after all that time.

Strangely, however, a Professor in Wajima had a good impression of it.

In fact, he gave it a rave review.
This professor, who had always used a mixture of different types of lacquers, eventually only used this Tottori lacquer as the top coat, and told me
“Its dryness comes from its essence, and despite being a young tree, its texture on the skin is extremely subtle. I like it.”
（Saying that its dryness comes from its essence uses a particular nuisance, but it is the sense that it dries not from the surface but from within the coating film. In concrete terms,straight after it is lacquered and dried, although the surface is dry, the inside has a gum-like feel, and, with Tottori lacquer, the concept is that it is dried evenly from within.）
Although it received such praise, the Asai lacquer struggled in Saitama.
However, it is showing fine form in the Kyoto summer.
It has now shown us its true value!
Much of my job involves attaching gold and other objects, and when you attach several thousand parts or several tens of thousands of parts, a fixed number will come loose and will need to be reattached.

In percentage terms, this is probably approximately 1%.
However, as this is a high number, 1 percent of parts is a large number.
The work I am currently making probably has around 4000-5000 parts and only one part came loose!

This is not even 1 percent. Just one part came loose!
Something I felt when I came to Kyoto was that the adhesiveness of the Asai lacquer was stronger than with any lacquer I had used up to that point.
This is not just me seeing the best in something. It is really producing these overwhelmingly strong results.
This lacquer has the personality of being serious and wholehearted.

In fact, although I am creating lacquered works, I very rarely create tableware.
Until now, I have made virtually no bowls or plates, and when I have made them, these have been requested by people around me and there are hardly any photos of them remaining.

However, I have created many different types of sake cups.
I enjoy making sake cups, and I have many ideas about this.
Combined with the fact that I enjoy drinking sake myself, I can imagine “putting sake in this”, and make it with a grin.

However, it is difficult to raise the price of sake cups, particularly those that you wish people to use.
In the case of an “only one” creation, you can reveal all of its elements as a product, and give it a high price by positioning it as an artistic work, but for the series that I would like people to use, I want to keep the price at 200,000 yen or below.

This being the case, I was unable to make a profit making them, and, even if I sold it, I found myself in the red.
Being in the red despite painstakingly working to increase quality is the worst possible situation for a business person.

I have a feeling that I made a loose reference in a blog to no longer being in the sake cup making game (I don’t really remember though).
However, I wish to retract.
I have decided to make a new series of 10 works looking forward to a private exhibition.
The reason I reached this decision is as follows.
Up to this point, making sake caps has given me many opportunities for expression.
For example,

Gold lacquer serving table　“Koge”

Gold lacquer spiral serving table　“Kikuka”
These two products
are collaboration products with the “Netsuke” creator Mansei-san,
and I believe that as problems they have achieved an extreme level of balance
From this, I gained a certain degree of confidence that I could pursue beauty by performing my best work in the modern age.

The last work I created was for my private exhibition in 2017
This sake cup was not complete at the time it was photographed.
Even so, it was included in the collection of products.
In the final stages before holding the private exhibition, this was one work that afforded me the opportunity to express color.

From that point,
I was able to link to express these jujube tree-like colors.

What opportunities for expression will the sake cups that I create for my next private exhibition give me?
I am not really sure, but I have the desire to pour the technology I currently possess and modernity into these small works.
I am sure that some things will become clear after doing that.

One regrettable thing is that I am not able to use this product.
The creator touches the product for the longest time, but is unable to actually use it.
I heal myself from this sense of loneliness by buying and using the products of other creators.
I will post another article when there is progress with these works!!

One of the attractions of lacquer is its transparency.
In fact , lacquer material continues to change once it solidifies.
Firstly, immediately after solidifying, it forms a somewhat rubber-like moist film coating.
It then hardens as the months and years go by, forming a crisp, hard film coating.
I do not think that the feel of using it, as lacquerware, really changes, but when working with it, the film coating that has sat for several years becomes hard, and the polishing work takes time.
Next, there is discoloration, and this is particularly evident.
With black lacquerware, the change is not so noticeable, but, with red, the transparency of the lacquerware increases and the coloring of the pigment improves.
Further, with the gold lacquer works as well, the coloring of the gold is enhanced as well, sinking into the background through transparency.
I will introduce you to a photo that appeared when I moved house.

Compare the wing section in these photos of a gold lacquer cicada.
The left shows immediately after the gold lacquering, which was in my student days so about 12 years ago, and the right is a current picture.
If you compare the two, you can see that the wings on the right have changed into a much brighter gold color.
This section uses a gold lacquering technique known as satin finish(Nashiji), and it involves applying layer after layer of lacquer with good transparency on top of gold dust.
This technique allows you to peer at the gold through the amber color of the lacquer and can said to be a method that enables you to easily see the quality of the lacquer.
As it is a tool I use every day, I was not really conscious of it. However, I never expected it to be as bright as this in 10 years.
Even creators like myself are moved every day by the material that is lacquer.

My first purchase of this year was wood.
I went to buy it at a specialist Cypress wood timber store in Iriya. When creating lacquered works, it is not necessary to use such a large piece of wood, so I buy small, high-quality planks and squared timber according to purpose.

When you go to buy wood at a timber store, there will be no pricetag attached.
Therefore, you will need to line up the materials you are interested in and get a quotation.
The price of the materials is calculated by length x width x thickness.
However, as you do not know the method of calculation, the price of some materials may be surprising.
Once you become accustomed to it, you may be able to imagine the approximate price based on a visual inspection, but sometimes when you ask for a quotation for squared timber made of good wood, you may be surprised.

Another negative point is that this is seasonal, so the price will take this element into account.
There is a huge lineup of Cypress wood, and when I discover a finely-grained top-quality wood, I am very happy.
Non-flashy Cypress wood is the height of luxury for me.
People whose job involves woodwork must have had the same experience.
There is a huge variety of materials for the body used in lacquered works. I would like to introduce you to some of these.

Wooden
Turnery grains, like bowls, and joinery grains, such as boxes, are generally made out of wooden materials.

In my case, for turnery, I use Zekolva and for joinery, I use Cypress.
Works are created by utilizing the characteristics of the wood and using the appropriate materials.

Dry lacquer
At the venue for dry lacquer exhibitions, I often get the question “What is dry lacquer?”
Dry lacquer refers to the body of a lacquer work, in which the lacquer is applied as an adhesive with cloth layered on top of this.
Unlike when processing wooden materials, a dry cloth is used, so it can be modeled freely.
This is a traditional technique used since ancient times and there are even statues of Buddha created using dry lacquer techniques.

Kontai
Lacquer applied to metal is known as Kontai.
When lacquer is applied to metal, the lacquer is forcibly dried using a method referred to as “glazing”.
Depending on how it is glazed, it forms an extremely tough coating.

Rantai
I am often questioned about this as well.
Rantai refers to bodies created using thin sharpened bamboo sticks.
As the bamboo acts like a measure, the fibers become very stable.
This is a technique you can see in the lacquerware of Kagawa Prefecture.

Tantai
This is a lacquerware product in which pottery is used as the body.
The pottery is corrected using the lacquer, such as gold ties, so there is a high level of compatibility.
I have not yet undertaken the challenge of making Tantai.

Jotai
The body is made withh rope. A mold is made as in the case of dry lacquer, and the body formed by twisting rope around.

 
As described above, lacquer is compatible with many different materials and there are various methods of production based on characteristics.
However, there is one exception to this…glass.
If you apply lacquer to glass, it does not stick well and will peel off.

Currently, there are some interim materials thtat improve its sticking capabilities, but it is hard to say that lacquer and glass have good compatibility.

If you go to exhibitions, you will see dry lacquer and “Rantai” in the titles of works.
I hope that you will take the trouble to give them a closer look and examine what kind of materials they are made from.

A single crystal within a bracket inside a lid (work by Mansei Uehara).
The work has been produced based on the theme of a crystal that resembles a drop, and the ripples and asssembled butterflies of light that spread out from there.
We have created a modeled work that uses techniques and materials to represent a variety of expressions.
Actually, the photographed work is not yet complete.
Today, we shall continue applying gold lacquer. Next to the wings of the butterfiles, we are depicting the detailed gold lacquer lines of “Mouchi” and “dyed figures”. We have represented the movement of space when the butterfiles fly and the ripples running on the surface.
This will now be polished up and completed.

“Premonition of beauty 2019 －∞directions －」
Two products in Gold-decorated Laden “Hiranatsume”

◆”Gozen-rokuji”
This product was created with the image of a scene in which the soft light of morning stretches out before you.
Items are differentiated by colors and as only a small amount of the required color can be used on eacah item, this has been created with 100 or more small items items.
Everything is hand-made, and the representation of the light consistsof approximately 1000 hours of work.
This is a concept based on the concept of “The modeling of light”.

◆”Gogo-rokuji”
Time during which the light of the sun transforms into the man-made brightness of the town
The darkness of night and the geometrical contrast of light are depicted in subtle gradations.