Lacquerware is no longer the export commodity it once was, but the craft workers who still make it are pushing the artistic potential of their art and bringing it to new audiences.
00:00The art of lacquerware is an intense craft that demands total commitment from the artist.
00:07Even the teeniest piece like this one takes at minimum half a year to complete.
00:12It's very much a matter of watching paint dry, as dozens if not hundreds of layers of varnish are applied and dry one by one.
00:20And then there's the painstaking sanding needed to make the piece shine.
00:24This workshop, the Lai family workshop, is especially renowned for the number of layers it can manage to place on a single object, sometimes in the hundreds.
00:33And they've been doing it this way for decades.
00:35It hasn't always been easy.
00:37Like other craftspeople, the Lai's took some time to regain their footing after plastic took over the market and exports stalled sometime around the 1960s.
00:46But they've found a way to keep the lights on and pass on their skills.
00:50The Lai's aren't the only ones in the business focused on fine art these days.
01:12The Wong workshop dates back to the very earliest days of this craft in Taiwan, brought around a century ago by Japanese colonists.
01:19At 105 years old, patriarch Wang Jing Shuang, educated at the Tokyo School of Fine Arts, is still using a brush, though mostly for paintings rather than the everyday goods he once produced.
01:31At this studio, each layer of lacquer takes a month to dry.
01:35And a painting can have dozens of layers in some of its more textured places.
01:39Still, there's some regret in the family about the disappearance of lacquer as functional as well as fine art.
01:45And a sense that just maybe, it's time for a comeback.
01:48This is a war of lacquer.
01:50Now that we're going to go home with a improper business model, Partie products is still as well as my beau castle.
01:53Only once again, only all in the wedding, just to make it to the clip.
01:59And maybe it could happen.
02:25Elementary schools like this could be the starting point.
02:28Lacquer shop owner Chiu Jun Zhang doesn't just teach kids about lacquer.
02:35He shows them how to make simple lacquerware items themselves, things like chopsticks.
02:40This hands-on learning is stimulating.
02:51And Chiu hopes the start of a lifelong engagement with the art form.
02:55Taiwan's lacquer artists have been honing their skills for a century, and they're confident the standards of art they've achieved have a future just as proud as their past.
03:07John Suu and John Van Trieste for Taiwan Plus.
03:10Taiwan's lacquer artists have been honing their skills for a century, and they're confident the standards of art they've achieved have a future just as proud as their past.
03:19John Suu and John Van Trieste for Taiwan Plus.
