Taiwan Today

At his workshop in a small village in Beipu Township, Hsinchu County, northern Taiwan, Peng Kun-yen (彭坤炎) “builds” another layer of lacquer on the top edge of a bowl he has already worked on for several weeks. The piece is then put aside for the lacquer to set for a day, after which another layer can be added. Crafting a lacquerware item layer by layer, from scratch, is Peng’s unique technique. Since only a limited thickness of lacquer can be added at one time, it takes six to 12 months to complete a single piece. “It takes lots and lots of patience, but the technique is worthwhile as it allows me the freedom to create the designs I have in mind,” he says.

Peng was born in 1958 to a fishing family near Nanliao Fishing Port in Hsinchu City, but started working part time at a furniture factory when he was still a junior high school student. The factory mainly manufactured products for the Japanese market and his job was to apply lacquer to the furniture. After completing his military service, Peng and his brother set up their own factory, where they produced items for a number of Japanese furniture brands.

Years in the business helped Peng build good connections with Japanese buyers, who regularly came to Taiwan for quality control inspections. When chatting with one of them, Peng learned that there is much more to lacquer, which is known as urushi in Japan, than just using it on furniture. The Japanese friend brought Peng some books on lacquerware and Peng, fascinated by the beauty of the craft, began experimenting with techniques he saw in the books during his free time. “I’d started working with lacquer when I was 14 and thought I knew it all,” he says. “But those books really opened my eyes and showed me a totally different lacquer world.” Peng notes that lacquer, though a simple substance in itself, offers a remarkably diverse medium for artists, who may spray or spread it onto the surface of materials such as eggshells, seashells, gold and silver powders and mother-of-pearl to enrich the texture.

While Peng was familiarizing himself with different urushi techniques, Taiwan’s furniture exporters were gradually losing their competitive edge. In 1986, Peng’s brother decided to move their furniture operation to mainland China, but Peng chose to stay in Taiwan and give working with lacquer a try. Rather than crafting everyday objects like lacquerware bowls, cups and chopsticks, however, he wanted to take the art route. “My plan was simple,” he says. “I wanted to create my perfect shapes and coat them with my perfect colors.”

Executing his plan, however, turned out to be not so simple. Peng explains that lacquer works are generally made by applying layers of the material to a base of bamboo strips, ceramics or wood. Artisans also sometimes craft “bodiless” lacquerware items by applying lacquer to a clay base, which is then removed after drying. “In both cases, those designs begin with an existing object or base,” he says, which means that the resulting works are not entirely new. “I just couldn’t create as freely as I desired.”

Thick Enough

Searching for a solution, Peng thought of the carved lacquerware that originated in China during the Tang dynasty (618–907) and saw rapid development in the Song dynasty (960–1279). The technique involves applying multiple layers of lacquer on a wooden surface until it is thick enough for engraving. “I thought that if lacquer could be built up in layers thick enough for engraving, maybe it could also be strong enough to form a whole piece,” he says.

After some experimentation, Peng found the technique to be workable, although it involved certain tradeoffs. For one thing, crafting works solely from lacquer is expensive, as it requires a large quantity of the material. The raw lacquer Peng uses to build the basic structure of an item is imported from mainland China or Vietnam and costs approximately NT$1,700 (US$57) per kilogram. The high-quality lacquer used on the outer surface is imported from Japan and can cost the same amount for just one gram, while the gold leaf and mother-of-pearl Peng uses to decorate his lacquerware items are also expensive.

Another tradeoff involved in crafting a piece entirely from lacquer is that the process takes an extremely long time, since the maximum thickness of lacquer Peng can add at one time is only 1 centimeter, and he must wait a day for that to set before adding more. And when the basic shape is finished, there is still extensive surface sanding, carving, coloring and polishing to be done to complete a piece. Peng was not discouraged by the cost and time required as he embarked on the craft, though his wife Zheng Li-xiang (鄭麗香) was less certain about the wisdom of his endeavor. “Lacquer was—and is—a minority form of art in Taiwan and I really wasn’t sure if he could achieve something—or at least make a living out of it—when he first started,” she says. “But I guess there are always decisions to make in life and one should go for it when one’s mind is made up.”

To gain recognition, Peng actively participated in various craft competitions. Beginning in 1992, his name appeared regularly on the awards lists of national shows such as the Nanying Art Exhibition and Taiwan Provincial Fine Arts Exhibition. Peng was not satisfied, however, with merely gaining a reputation in Taiwan. “Japan is considered to have the best preserved and developed lacquer art,” he says. “I really wanted to know how my works compared with theirs.”

Through some old connections, Peng gained opportunities to participate in Japanese exhibitions and competitions, which also proved to be great venues for learning and picking up new techniques. In 2006, his work Stretch won the fourth-place award at Japan’s highest-level lacquer competition, which is held by the Japan Urushi Craft Association at Meiji Jingu, a major Tokyo shrine. “It was the first time one of the awards had been won by a non-Japanese artist,” Peng says. “Considering how ‘careful’ the Japanese are about presenting an award for one of the country’s traditional crafts to a foreigner, I was very proud of myself.”

Unexpected Consequences

Fame, however, had unexpected consequences. After the excitement of receiving the award faded, Peng found he was no longer capable of creating anything new. “My mind was occupied with the thought that I’d reached the pinnacle by winning that award and it wasn’t possible for me to progress any further,” he recalls. “I was so depressed that I locked myself in the workshop every day and did nothing but pity myself.” For more than a year, Peng suffered serious depression and eventually had to seek professional assistance. Psychotherapy helped, but Peng thinks that talking to other artists did more to assist his recovery. “I learned from them that all artists have ups and downs in their careers,” he says. “You can be trapped forever, or you can learn to use bottlenecks as an opportunity for making a breakthrough.” Peng took the latter route and started creating art again.

Rather than focusing only on shapes and colors for their own sake, he started trying to use those elements to express his thoughts and observations about life, though most of his works remain abstract. Critics have compared many of Peng’s more recent creations to those of surrealists like English sculptor Henry Moore (1898–1986) or Belarusian artist Ossip Zadkine (1890–1967).

In 2011, Peng participated in the Japan Urushi Craft Association competition again and collected the third-place award for his work Auspicious Light. “An astonishing piece that needs to be introduced to the whole world,” the judging panel commented. Again, he was the only non-Japanese artist to receive an award, but this time he did so with a healthier mindset. “I guess I adjusted well, because I knew I’d still be able to make breakthroughs and go after the first- and second-place awards,” he says.

Archeological evidence shows that the Chinese started to use lacquerware around 7,000 years ago, Peng says, while the history of lacquerware manufacturing in Taiwan dates back only to the Japanese colonial period (1895–1945). In an attempt to develop Taiwan into a production base for lacquerware products for the tourism market and for export to Japan, the colonial government brought in lacquer trees, set up training facilities and even sent some Taiwanese to craft schools in Japan to learn the techniques. Taiwanese master craftsmen such as Lai Kao-shan (賴高山, 1924–2004) and Wang Qing-shuang (王清霜), for example, learned the craft in Japan. Taiwan’s lacquerware manufacturers did good business exporting everyday items such as bowls, chopsticks and cups to the Japanese market from the 1960s until the late 1980s, but exchanges between craftsmen and artists of the two countries have been rare since the colonial era.

As lacquerware tends to be labor-intensive and is difficult to mass produce, it began diminishing in Taiwan and mainland China as modern machinery took on an ever-larger role in the manufacturing process. In Japan, however, the craft has been carefully preserved and developed since it was introduced from China during the Tang dynasty. Lacquered products, for example, remain a celebrated part of culinary tradition in Japan, where such items have long been used to accentuate the presentation of cuisine. In fact, some Japanese families have been crafting lacquerware for more than 30 generations.

Showcasing Differences

To revitalize the craft in Taiwan, Peng began to consider ways to promote contact between Taiwanese and Japanese lacquerware artists. He eventually hit upon the idea of organizing shows that exhibit lacquerware from both countries, as they could not only showcase the differences in the development of the craft, but also provide a great opportunity for cultural exchanges. Using his connections in both countries, he has thus far helped organize three Taiwan-Japan lacquerware exhibitions: one in 1997 in Hsinchu, one in 2004 in Taichung, central Taiwan, and again in Hsinchu in 2011.

In addition to showcasing works by different generations of craftsmen from the two nations, the exhibitions have provided learning opportunities for Taiwanese artists. For example, one of the shows featured a Japanese master who demonstrated the craft of maki-e—a Japanese technique that involves layering and applying metal powder and lacquer to give flat motifs and figures more volume and texture. “For the Japanese, many of the techniques are considered trade secrets that are passed down only from fathers to sons or from masters to apprentices,” Peng says. “Watching one of those craftsmen give a public demonstration in another country provided a rare opportunity for outsiders to pick up some of the techniques.”

While Peng has been delighted to facilitate cultural exchanges between craftsmen, he takes more satisfaction in the fact that the number of curious visitors, school teachers and students has increased at each domestic show. “It doesn’t mean that any of them will become lacquer artists, but it’s certainly an indication that more people are noticing lacquerware and perhaps appreciating it,” he says. “It’s good news for a traditional craft that fell into neglect for quite a while.”

Write to Jim Hwang at cyhuang03@mofa.gov.tw