The lacquer is a resin of the lacquer tree planted mostly in the North of Vietnam. They make an incision on the trunk of the lacquer tree to have the resin like the latex of the rubber tree.
The natural color is light white, after the treatment with natural substances, they have 2 colors to make lacquerware: transparent and black.
The black lacquer used to make the black and white lacquerware that has the black background. The transparent lacquer used to make colorful one.
There are two basic stages to make lacquerware: wood preparation (or prepare the support) and decoration (or painting, or mother of pearl or eggsell).
Wood preparation: wood cutting, then the raw lacquerware is covered with a piece of gauze to prevent it from any crack or curving shape. After that, they mix the lacquer with gypsum to make lacquerware harder and prevent wood from termites (con mối) and wood-borers (sâu gỗ). So, lacquerware is very solid and adaptive to all climate (or resist the dry climate).
Painting: the lacquerware surface, after many times rubbing in water, is so smouth. The artists will paint on this surface, then add 3 more layers of transparent lacquer, polish step by step to finish the painting.
Mother of pearl: A variety of pearl from the sea will be cut into different shapes, then artists will stick these on the wood surface, followed by 19 lacquer layers and 19 times rubbing. it takes about 3 to 4 months to finish a painting because each layer of lacquer needs 3 days to dry.
If you want to find out Lacquer of Vietnam, let's take enjoy Hanoi City tour with Viet Unique Tours.
