Max Lamb’s upcoming show ‘Urushi Wajima’ at London’s Gallery Fumi is the culmination of a nearly ten-year love affair with the finest Japanese urushi lacquer, and with the craftspeople in Wajima – in Ishikawa prefecture, on the northern tip of the Noto peninsula – who live and breathe the craft. ‘I’ve been in Wajima four times and just love working with all the craftspeople involved,’ says Lamb. His designs merge generations of tradition with his humorous and no-nonsense approach to the creative terrain between art and furniture.
If one can talk about a hierarchy of lacquer-producing regions in Japan, Wajima comes out on top. Wajima-nuri, as lacquer products from the small city (population 25,000) are known in Japan, are famed for superior durability. Their rigorous production involves layer upon layer of increasingly fine base coats, with careful drying, sanding and smoothing between each layer, until the final glossy top layer is applied, perhaps with some additional decoration in fine gold-leaf or coloured urushi.
Lamb’s first hands-on experience with the tradition was back in 2010, when he participated in an exhibition at the Japanese Embassy in London called ‘Collacqueration’. One of his early three-legged split-wood stools was given the all-over lacquer treatment by a Wajima craftsperson.
この記事は Wallpaper の October 2019 版に掲載されています。
7 日間の Magzter GOLD 無料トライアルを開始して、何千もの厳選されたプレミアム ストーリー、9,000 以上の雑誌や新聞にアクセスしてください。
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この記事は Wallpaper の October 2019 版に掲載されています。
7 日間の Magzter GOLD 無料トライアルを開始して、何千もの厳選されたプレミアム ストーリー、9,000 以上の雑誌や新聞にアクセスしてください。
すでに購読者です? サインイン
Guiding Light - Designer Joe Armitage follows his grandfather's footsteps in India, reissuing his elegant midcentury lamp and creating a new chandelier for Nilufar Gallery
For some of us, family inheritances I tend to be burdensome, taking up space, emotionally and physically, in both our minds and attics. For the London-based designer and architect Joe Armitage, however, a family heirloom has taken him somewhere lighter and brighter, across generations and continents, and into the path of Le Corbusier. This is the story of a lamp designed by Edward Armitage in India 72 years ago, which has today been expanded into a collection of lights by his grandson Joe.
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WARM FRONT
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BALCONY SCENE
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SECOND NATURE
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