| |
Myanmar
Lacquer Ware
Lackarbeiten
Lacquer
Tableware
|
|
Lacquer ware,
Lackarbeiten, Myanmar Lacquer
|
|
|
Lacquer ware is perhaps the most distinctive
and
traditional of all Myanmar Burma handicrafts
and the most widely produced and used.
Lacquer ware was long a favorite of royalty for storing documents and
precious jewelries.
Common households employed lacquer ware for everyday use such as keeping
betel nuts and leaves or as soup bowls.
Monks use a black lacquer ware bowl known as thabeik when asking for alms. Lacquer ware -
Lackarbeiten - from Myanmar Burma Birma was so highly treasured that
Myanmar’s kings often presented lacquer objects as gifts to foreign
emissaries.
Little is known of how the making of lacquer ware - Lackarbeiten -started in
Myanmar Burma Birma, although some believe that it may have been introduced
from China’s Yunnan province.
|
|
What is certain is that lacquer ware is a
traditional Myanmar craft that dates as far back as the 13th century.
Valued for its artistic beauty
and practical qualities — it is light and watertight, for example — lacquer
ware has many applications. One can find lacquer ware ash trays, bowls,
water jars, vases, salvers for temple offerings, cups, jewellery boxes based
on an ancient design that double as pillows, traditional betel boxes,
plates, storage chests, tables and chairs.
Considering the time and work involved
it takes five to seven months to
make even the smallest item lacquer ware is surprisingly inexpensive.
Lacquer ware makes a wonderful memento of a visit to Myanmar. Lacquer ware manufacturing originally came to
Myanmar from China. Actually to create lacquer ware is rather a cottage
industry were lots of people, mainly young girls, making all kind of object.
Either usable objects like lacquer furniture or decorative and art objects
for the house. |
|
Over the centuries, the designs, techniques
and pattern creating lacquer ware have become distinctively Myanmar. To
create lacquer ware handicrafts or other items is
a booming cottage industry mainly at
Bagan, they famous temple and pagoda city
in central Myanmar.
The lacquer material is obtained from a tree which grows
around the Bagan area of Myanmar. Today different base materials are used to
create lacquer ware, the most common are bamboo and very thin wood witch is
finally coated with lacquer.
Lacquer is a coating material
that brings a very hard and durable finish plus certain flexibility, its
very difficult to destroy it, |
lacquer plate Lackarbeiten |
| just like
plastic. |
Lacquer elephant |
Lacquer is resistant to water, acid and abrasion
to a certain extend. The "lacquer tree", called the lac or
varnish tree. When the tree has the
proper size and age, cuts are made into the bark and the sap is collected,
somehow similar to rubber trees.
China, Japan,
Myanmar and Thailand produced lacquer items since hundred of
years ago. Probably the most creative item like lacquer elephants,
lacquer vases, tableware, |
Lacquer Elephant Chiang Mai Thailand
|
|
lacquer
boxes, lacquer tableware, lacquer furniture and other all lacquered
items come from
Chiang Mai Thailand
All
other countries are rather conservative on lacquer creations in
particular when the lacquer items are blended with other materials.
In Indian lacquer is
sometimes made from the secretions of a specific type of insect, rather than
the sap of the tree.
Cinnabar
lacquer ware is a very
special type of lacquer ware. The lacquer is applied
without pigments added, and results in the piece having a translucent
finish. With Cinnabar lacquer, color is added to get the deep red
color that is called Cinnabar, or China Red.
The mineral cinnabar is ground into a pigment, added to the lacquer and give
the lacquer ware a deep
red color. Cinnabar is mercuric sulfide like it was used in
thermometers years ago. Means it contains mercury and mercury is highly
poisonous. But this days its only the which is left modern cinnabar
lacquer ware
is made with non-toxic pigments that emulate the color of the original. |
Lacquer vases |
|
|
The centre of lacquer ware manufacture is Bagan in upper Myanmar.
It is a
cottage industry and in the village of Myinkaba alone, some 600 households
produce lacquer ware.
Visitors are welcome to watch the process, a skill
passed down from generation to generation. golden Cuckoo Lacquer ware in Myinkaba and Ma Moe Moe Family Lacquer ware in Ywar Thit Quarter, New Bagan,
have English-speaking proprietors who are willing to demonstrate the
processes step by step.
|
lacquer tableware
Selling Lacquer
ware in Bagan
Bamboo - Wicker Frame for the
Lacquer ware item
Coating of Lacquer is applied
Coating of Lacquer and Paint is
applied
Lacquer Paint is applied
Lacquer ware Drying and Polishing
Creating Lacquer ware
Lacquer ware polishing
Color and designs are worked
onto the lacquer objec
Traditional Lacquer ware design
is etched onto the surface |
The lacquer
tableware
manufacturing process begins with the making of a bamboo frame for the lacquer ware
item, a bowl for example. For objects of the highest quality, fine
horsehair, taken from the tail, is woven around the frame.
You can tell if
horsehair is used by pressing the sides of the bowl together — they should
touch.
Lower quality bowls are made completely of bamboo wicker woven around
the frame and are very stiff as a result.
Bamboo wicker or horsehair are traditional materials employed for
lacquer- ware products. Nowadays, cheaper and more durable wood ' mainly
teak or mango plywood ' is sometimes used to make bases for objects that are
not round in shape, trays, boxes, treasure chests, screens, tables and
chairs for example.
After the frame is made and bamboo wicker or
horsehair has been woven around it, the first coating of lacquer is
applied. The lacquer paint used is black and it comes from a resin of a
particular tree found around Inle Lake in eastern Myanmar.
The lacquer paint
is applied by hand which makes an even coating. The object is then left to
dry for a week in an underground cellar; drying in the sun in the early
stages causes pockmarks.
The object is then taken out for a second
coating of lacquer. It is left to dry for yet another week in the
cellar. The next stage involves covering the object with a paste made from a
mixture of pulverized buffalo bone, teak sawdust and lacquer to fill up any
nooks or crevices.
It is left to dry for a week. The object is then polished
with pumice stone to remove rough surfaces. Lacquer paint is again applied
and the object put aside to dry.
After another week, the object is polished
again, both on the inside and outside, using a mixture of clay and
stone. The polishing is done three times before the object is stored
underground for one month. Then a long process of painting and drying
begins.
First, the inside of the object is painted with lacquer
and left to
dry for a week; then the outside is painted and the object is again put
aside for drying.
At that stage the object is polished again with water and
stone, dried in the sun for two hours, another coat of lacquer is applied
and the object is dried underground for a week.
For the next seven weeks, a layer of
lacquer is applied at one-week intervals. The result is a shining lacquer
product made even glossier by careful polishing with a buffalo chamois
soaked in sesame oil. At this stage, the desired color or colors and
designs are worked onto the object. Usually traditional designs are etched
onto the surface by very fine instruments.
Then one color is applied, the Lacquer ware is left to dry for a week, it is polished with rice husks,
washed with water and painted with acacia glue to fix the color.
If another color is required,
more
details are etched and coated with the second color, left to dry for a
week, washed and then fixed with acacia glue again. More etchings are made
and a third color is added and this time, the object is left to dry for a
month. Later, it is polished first with teakwood
ash and water and then with a piece of cotton cloth. It is washed and dried again for ten minutes in the
sun and finally polished with a powder made from pulverized petrified wood.
That's not all. The object is painted once more on the
|
lacquer tableware
Lacquer ware round Box with Gold
Leaves
Lacquer ware round Box with
Flower
Tratitional Lacquer ware Items
Myanmar Lacquer ware Items
Native Style Lacquer ware
Lacquer ware Plate
Color and designs are worked
onto the lacquer object
Lacquer tableware and Lacquer Table
Lacquer ware Para vent Room
Divider Furniture
Lacquer ware designs are etched
onto the surface
Lacquer ware designs are etched
onto the surface |
|
|
inside with red
lacquer, left to dry for one week and is finally
ready for sale.
It takes five months to produce lacquer cups,
seven months to make betel boxes and at least a year to produce tables and
chairs. But the final result is without a doubt, a thing of beauty and a
fine testimony to Myanmar craftsmanship.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Lacquer ware,
Lackarbeiten,
Myanmar,
Burma,
Birma,
produces, lacquer,
lacquer boxes,
lacquer tableware,
lacquer
furniture, Myanmar
Lacquer.
all at e-books |
|
|
|
|
|
