Carved Lacquerware Technique (Tianshui)

The carved lacquerware technique is a Chinese lacquer craft reaching back a thousand years, coating a wooden body with raw lacquer through dozens or hundreds of applications—each dried and ground—until the desired thickness is reached, then carving patterns, filling colour and inlaying stone and shell. Tianshui lacquer has a long lineage and stands among China's four great lacquer schools, prized for distinctive shapes, hard lustrous surfaces and exquisite finish. In 2008 the technique (number VIII-50) was added to the second national ICH list as an expansion project, declared by Tianshui, Gansu.

Tianshui lacquer coats local woods—pine, birch, basswood—with native raw lacquer, building up the body through repeated applications, grinding it smooth, then carving and inlaying colour with fine stones and shell, the process so lavish and the wares so ornate that it has been called the crown of Chinese carved lacquer.

Tianshui lacquer carries the handicraft tradition that ran along the Silk Road and forms an important branch of Chinese lacquer art, its works at once useful and beautiful, of real value for studying how the craft evolved and how cultures met along the way.