On the Cultural Obsession with Origins and Orthodoxy in Lacquer

By qīqíqǐqì  ·  July, 2025

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When I first encountered lacquer, my attitude went through several distinct shifts.

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At first, I was fascinated by its materiality, drawn by an indescribable, instinctive attraction. As I learned more, I was struck by its vast history and weighty cultural background. Later, when I began to work with it myself, I became captivated by its uncontrollable qualities in practice, which made me feel the material had a life of its own.

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Carrying this intuition and passion, I tried to re-approach and practice lacquer through the lens of contemporary art. That was when I discovered two core contradictions in lacquer. These not only affect how lacquer is understood and transmitted, but also shape how contemporary practitioners are accepted or excluded.

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The first is lacquer’s built-in cultural obsession with origins and orthodoxy.

The social structures and historical–cultural systems that lacquer carries make it impossible to avoid questions of origin, lineage, and geography. In today’s society, where traditional culture has been institutionalised through state mechanisms, media narratives, and public perception, issues such as whether you were taught by an officially recognised heritage bearer, whether you come from a region known for lacquer trees or lacquerware, or whether you have family members in the trade, often become decisive factors in judging whether you are “legitimate” enough to work with lacquer.​

I began to wonder whether lacquer has been <filtered> or marked with an elite label. What historical reasons have led to this perception? Why do ceramics, woodworking, and other materials rarely face such questioning, while lacquer repeatedly does?

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Once lacquer was included in the Intangible Cultural Heritage system, its modes of transmission became guided more by preservation than by innovation. Within this system, lacquer is framed in terms of protection and authenticity, often led by local governments, heritage bearers, and cultural tourism. This phenomenon exists in weaving and woodworking too, but it is particularly pronounced in lacquer, perhaps because its prestige and difficulty have been mythologized.

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Historically, lacquer was used for imperial vessels, Buddhist statues, and furniture, serving the aristocracy, political power, and religious institutions. This historical residue continues today, giving lacquer an aura of nobility and distance.

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In everyday perception, lacquer is considered rare (limited supply), dangerous (allergenic, complex), and time-consuming (processes taking a hundred days or more). This creates an unconscious sense of restriction over who is “qualified” to work with it.

​Meanwhile, in fields such as ceramics, painting, and even metalwork, the shift from craft to art or design, moving away from region and lineage, has largely been completed. Lacquer, however, has yet to undergo such a modern reconstruction.

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If the cultural obsession with origins and orthodoxy makes people first ask “Who are you?”, then in material practice another kind of obsession makes them constantly question “Are you doing it right?”.

In the discourse of traditional craft, lacquer is firmly bound to an almost sanctified logic of technique: it must take an extremely long time, involve hundreds of repeated steps, and aim for a surface that is flat, glossy, and flawless. To some extent, this reflects how the aesthetics of lacquerware are rooted in a labour-intensive logic of handcraft. In the medieval and early modern periods, smoothness was not naturally available, so it became the ideal attribute of luxury, bound up with power and status, functioning as a tool to maintain hierarchy.

I do not deny that this is a defining feature of lacquer. Traditional techniques, along with their cultural values, standards, and conventions, provide us with guidance and orientation, serving as a stable reference for meaning. Yet these standards and conventions not only provide meaning, they also deeply shape how history is narrated. From human behaviour to economics, politics, and society, they produce certain “truths,” often wrapped in false narratives and misleading images. In this sense, the binary between protection and constraint, value and limitation, holds critical significance. Only by looking critically at our own culture can we distinguish what is genuine tradition and what is merely an imposed myth.

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Technique itself does not equal the voice of culture. When treated as absolute truth, it restricts creativity and authenticity. The heritage framework can then feel more like a straitjacket. Traditional techniques may guide creation, but they can also suffocate the desire for risk and independent invention.

If we want to keep creating, we must learn to appreciate things we have never heard, seen, or read before, and understand why our taste differs from others. Keeping traditional techniques alive is equally important, but true culture and heritage only endure when new perspectives and meanings are developed. The value of tradition can only be preserved when its outer shell is opened at the right moment. This happens when it acknowledges its own plasticity and fragility.

 

 

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Sources & Inspiration

Out of Touch: On the Sensorial in the Historical Interpretation of Japanese Lacquer — Christine M.E. Guth

Documents of Contemporary Art: Materiality — Petra Lange-Berndt (ed.)

Fragility: To Touch and Be Touched — Marlies De Munck & Pascal Gielen

In Praise of Shadows — Jun’ichirō Tanizaki

From the Museum of Touch — Susan Stewart

The Memory of Touch — Laura U. Marks

Vietnamese Lacquer Painting: Between Materiality and History — National Gallery Singapore

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