An Exchange Student’s Research on Urushi

In 2011/12 I had the chance to spend 10 months as an exchange student at Toyama University’s Faculty of Art and Design, Takaoka campus in Japan. One of the things I spent most of my time with there, was to learn the basics of working with Japanese lacquer – urushi. Since I found there to be a lack of literature on the “how to” of urushi in English and the western world in general, I decided to put some of things I learned into a short research paper.

“An Exchange Students Research on Urushi” (find the PDF here) gives an overview of the basic materials and tools used when working with Japanese lacquer, as well as a step by step guide of how to create an urushi surface according to how I was taught to do it in my time as an exchange student. You can freely download the research paper from the link in the heading above, and while I am only a beginner and learner myself, I hope it gives some insight into the actual “how” of working with this wonderful material.

Remnants

Later on I also decided to use urushi in my graduation work ‘remnants’. As a jewelry designer I was especially interested in how to use the lacquer on metal and therefore included quite a number of tests in that area in my paper. The whole thing is available online for anybody who might be interested. Find it here.