''Urushi-e'' (漆絵 "

lacquer Lacquer is a type of hard and usually shiny coating or finish applied to materials such as wood or metal. It is most often made from resin extracted from trees and waxes and has been in use since antiquity. Asian lacquerware, which may be ca ...

picture ) refers to three different techniques in

Japanese art Japanese art covers a wide range of art styles and media, including ancient pottery, sculpture, ink painting and calligraphy on silk and paper, ''ukiyo-e'' paintings and woodblock prints, ceramics, origami, and more recently manga and anime. It ...

. Though urushi-e is most associated with woodblock, the term urushi-e is not exclusive to that medium. It can also refer to pictures using lacquer as a paint on three-dimensional lacquered objects; and paintings using actual lacquer on paper or occasionally silk.

Technique

In Japanese woodblock printing, urushi-e generally refers to a hand-painted technique. Instead of printing with ''urushi'' (natural lacquer) it was painted on by hand. This meant that urushi-e pictures could be more colorful than most block prints of the time. Five colors were available when the technique was first developed; brown, yellow, green, red, and black. Urushi-e was sometimes used as a term to describe all hand-painted woodblock prints in Japan, not only those painted with lacquer, however, only urushi-e used ''iro-urushi'', meaning colored lacquer, made from mixing clear lacquer and one of the five pigments. Artists such as

Nishimura Shigenaga Nishimura Shigenaga ( ja, 西村重長; – 23 July 1756) was a Japanese ukiyo-e artist. Shigenaga was born in Edo (modern Tokyo). He worked as a landlord in Tōriabura-chō before moving to the Kanda district, where he ran a bookshop ...

c.1680s-1750 were also known to use black ink thickened with

hide glue Animal glue is an adhesive that is created by prolonged boiling of animal connective tissue in a process called rendering. In addition to being used as an adhesive it is used for coating and sizing, in decorative composition ornaments, and as a ...

to attain a lacquer-like effect on some on his prints. In addition to colored lacquer, gold was sometimes applied to urushi-e works in the form of

gold leaf Gold leaf is gold that has been hammered into thin sheets (usually around 0.1 µm thick) by goldbeating and is often used for gilding. Gold leaf is available in a wide variety of karats and shades. The most commonly used gold is 22-kara ...

and powders.

Prints

''Urushi-e'' woodblock prints were made using thick, dark black lines, and were sometimes hand-colored. The ink was mixed with an animal-based glue called '' nikawa'', which thickened it and gave it a lustrous shine, said to resemble lacquer. Most often, this was used not in creating the entire print, but only in enhancing a particular element, such as an

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or a figure's hair, to give it shine and make the image more luxurious overall. Prints which include ''urushi-e'' elements are likely to also feature the use of

mica Micas ( ) are a group of silicate minerals whose outstanding physical characteristic is that individual mica crystals can easily be split into extremely thin elastic plates. This characteristic is described as perfect basal cleavage. Mica is ...

, metal dusts, and other elements which enhanced the appearance, quality and value of the works. The technique was most popular in the early 18th century Japan during the Edo era and can be seen in works by many artists of the time.

Paintings

In painting, the term refers to the use of colored lacquers, produced by mixing pigments with clear lacquer. The use of colored lacquer for painting goes back to the prehistoric

Jōmon period The is the time in Japanese history, traditionally dated between 6,000–300 BCE, during which Japan was inhabited by a diverse hunter-gatherer and early agriculturalist population united through a common Jōmon culture, which reached a c ...

, and became especially popular in the

Nara period The of the history of Japan covers the years from CE 710 to 794. Empress Genmei established the capital of Heijō-kyō (present-day Nara). Except for a five-year period (740–745), when the capital was briefly moved again, it remained the cap ...

(8th century), when a great many works were made using red lacquer against a black background. Until the 19th century, however, the use of natural pigments restricted the colors accessible to artists to red, black, yellow, green, and light brown.

Artists

Artist

Shibata Zeshin was a Japanese lacquer painter and print artist of the late Edo period and early Meiji era. He has been called "Japan's greatest lacquerer", but his reputation as painter and print artist is more complex: In Japan, he is known as both t ...

(1807-1891) is known for his innovations in this regard, and is believed by some to be the first to use lacquer not just as a decorative element (in painting boxes, furniture, and pottery) but as a medium for painted scrolls. Zeshin experimented extensively with various substances, which he mixed with lacquer to create a variety of effects, including simulating the appearance of various metals (iron, gold, bronze, copper), and imitating the appearance and texture of Western

oil painting Oil painting is the process of painting with pigments with a medium of drying oil as the binder. It has been the most common technique for artistic painting on wood panel or canvas for several centuries, spreading from Europe to the rest of ...

. Other artists who used the technique include: *

Torii Kiyonobu I Torii Kiyonobu I ( ja, 鳥居清信; – 22 August 1729) was a Japanese painter and printmaker in the ukiyo-e style, who is renowned for his work on kabuki signboards and related materials. Along with his father Torii Kiyomoto, ...

(1664-1729) a member of the

Torii A is a traditional Japanese gate most commonly found at the entrance of or within a Shinto shrine, where it symbolically marks the transition from the mundane to the sacred. The presence of a ''torii'' at the entrance is usually the simplest ...

ukiyo-e Ukiyo-e is a genre of Japanese art which flourished from the 17th through 19th centuries. Its artists produced woodblock prints and paintings Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surfac ...

school used urushi-e. *

Torii Kiyomasu was a Japanese painter and printmaker of the Torii school, in the genre of ''ukiyo-e''. Like the other Torii artists, his primary focus was on Kabuki billboards, advertisements, actor prints, and other related material. Many scholars believe Kiy ...

another member of the Torii school also made five pigment urushi-e. * Another artist

, used it in brass powder in some of his urushi-e works. *

Okumura Masanobu Okumura Masanobu ( ja, 奥村政信; 1686 – 13 March 1764) was a Japanese print designer, book publisher, and painter. He also illustrated novelettes and in his early years wrote some fiction. At first his work adhered to the Torii ...

was another who used this technique in the Edo era.

References

{{Ukiyo-e Japanese art terminology Japanese lacquerware Japanese painting Ukiyo-e genres

Technique

Prints

Paintings

Artists

See also

References