This is something I am doing as a learning project with a teacher who studied makie.
The carved lacquer has come off this very old whisk. The whisk itself dates to at least the Edo period but since it is damaged no one wanted it at the antiques auction I picked it up at.
The first step was to remove all the loose lacquer and then to apply a middle black in order to stabilize the remaining lacquer.
Here is the first of a series of videos from the Fall, 2015, 10 day workshop in Nara. This one shows the application of the base lacquer for metal.
There is no audio but some points to look for are how carefully the lacquer has to be applied, the cleanliness of the workspace, and although it isn’t obvious from the video, the thinness of the application of lacquer.
I am in the U.S. for the 1st. time in 2 years, 4th. time in 20 years.
I flew in through Dallas/Fort Worth on the day Hurricane Patricia landed. My American Airlines flight was cancelled so after waiting 2 hours in one line and about 1 hour in another line and an additional 3 hour delay I arrived on the east coast of the U.S. at about 3:30 am.
In a couple of days I will be in Cedar Falls, Iowa. That workshop is now full and I am looking forward to meeting everyone and working with synthetic lacquer with them.
On Halloween and the next day, November 1st. I will be in San Francisco for 2 workshops. The first one is with synthetic lacquer and the second one is with real lacquer. The second workshop focuses on metal finishing so I have prepared a set of silver, both #3 grind and #10 grind so everyone can have a chance to finish them.
