Passing the Lacquer On: Three Generations, One Craft
Craft · Lacquer
Coating an object with lacquer takes dozens of layers, and every layer has to dry in the dark. Liu Zhanggan is eighty-seven and still applying them.
The Chinese word for lacquering is xiū qī. Few people read it now. It simply means coating an object with lacquer: one layer, wait for it to dry, another layer. A decent piece takes dozens of rounds. In Fuzhou this craft is called bodiless lacquerware, and along with Beijing cloisonné and Jingdezhen porcelain it is counted among China's three great traditional crafts.
Liu Zhanggan was born in Fuzhou in 1937. He is a city-level inheritor of Fuzhou bodiless lacquerware decoration. His family says he is eighty-seven now and still goes to the shop every day, works for half the morning, and comes back up in the evening to look at one piece or another.
IFrom a boy who drew, to a carving bench
He drew from childhood. In 1956 he entered the Fuzhou School of Arts and Crafts, studying under Li Zhiqing — one of the founders of modern Chinese lacquer painting — and the painter Chen Zifen.
In his third year, as he was about to graduate, China was preparing for the tenth anniversary of the People's Republic. The ten great buildings in Beijing and the Great Hall of the People needed decorating, Fujian sent a team, and he went north with his teachers.
He talked about that trip for the rest of his life: working beside the masters, watching how they handled a knife, seeing how far the craft could go. The lacquer work in the Fujian Hall of the Great Hall of the People, just before National Day in 1959, was the brightest stretch of his career. Later he worked on the Taiwan Hall, the banqueting halls, and rooms at Zhongnanhai.
In 1960 he was assigned to the Second Fuzhou Bodiless Lacquerware Factory, to the carving team, making wine cups, tea cups and small vessels. Small pieces teach the hand fastest: one line cut crooked and the whole piece is scrap. His work was later exported, including to the United States, and earned the factory more than ten thousand dollars — a serious sum at the time.
IIOne knife, one coat, no shortcuts
In 1986, building on his teacher's taihua technique, he combined carving-inlay with inlay proper and produced his own method: taihua tianqian.
It sounds simple. Cover the body with tin foil. Draw the pattern on the foil. Cut along the lines with a knife and lift away the foil you do not need. Fill the cut grooves with coloured lacquer or crushed shell. Then lacquer, wet-sand and polish, again and again. From glue and foil to cutting, colouring, inlaying, lacquering, sanding and polishing, it is a dozen steps, and none of them can be skipped.
The knife is the hard part. It travels over tin foil, and the line has to run clean and even — a difference in thickness shows. The old phrase is "using the knife as a brush": the cut has to carry the force of a written stroke.
Then comes polishing. The palm, with brick dust and nut oil, works the surface back and forth at an even pace until the surface shine is gone and a deeper light comes up from inside the lacquer. Too light and the pattern stays flat. Too heavy and dozens of coats are wasted.
The least romantic part: raw lacquer bites. Many people are allergic — rashes, peeling skin, nights without sleep. And every coat has to sit in a dark, humid room until it dries. Plenty of beginners leave after two or three months.
IIIThe daughter who started with a paintbrush
As a child, Liu Cuiyu watched her father paint. One day, while he was out, she picked up his brush, dipped it in water and scribbled on paper. He came back, did not scold her, and said one sentence:
“Then you had better learn it properly, with me.”
Liu Zhanggan, to his daughter
That was when she began. In 2006, when Fuzhou set up its lacquer art base, father and daughter joined together and she worked as his assistant. Over a dozen years they went from a small rented room to a studio, a showroom and a shop of their own.
Living Heritage · Fuzhou Lacquer
Natural Lacquer Zelkova Wood Teacup
Hand-turned from solid zelkova wood and brushed with dozens of coats of natural raw lacquer, each cured slowly in darkness. A quiet, everyday vessel that grows richer and more lustrous with every pour.
IVRed and black — plus white and orange
Traditional lacquer has two ground colours: vermilion and deep black. Her generation started pushing at that. White came in, orange came in, and the pieces became lighter and brighter. With a modern look, younger buyers began to pay attention.
She says it is not only about selling:
“Passing a craft on is not a slogan. It needs more people to know lacquer, to enjoy looking at it, to love it the way we do.”
Liu Cuiyu
VThe gap
Behind the busy showroom is a cold number. By their count, the craftspeople nationwide who can complete the whole process alone — and solve the problems that come up along the way — number fewer than a hundred.
It is not that nobody comes. It is that they do not stay. Beginners arrive, last two or three months and leave: the lacquer irritates their skin, and the process is too long for anyone in a hurry. Father and daughter keep working on how to keep people — open workshops, short courses, letting someone touch lacquer first and decide about studying later.
The third generation is in now too. They say they grew up watching their grandfather and mother work here until late, and somewhere in that they started to like it; they enter competitions now, and have won prizes. A craft that lasts three generations rarely lasts on a slogan. It lasts on meals eaten nearby and evenings spent watching someone work.
To see lacquer you can actually use, look along this shelf. This zelkova cup is the plainest possible version of the craft — layer after layer of lacquer, held in the hand every day.