Eiko TANAKA became interested in traditional Japanese lacquerware when she was a high school student and majored in lacquer art at university. After graduation, she entered the Ishikawa Prefectural Yamanaka Lacquerware Industrial Technology center. Later, she applied to become an apprentice to Torao NAKASHIMA, who was an instructor at the center.
After five years of training, she became independent and has been working hard every day to master more advanced techniques.
Rather than maintaining the traditional techniques, she incorporated her own thoughts and her own sense of beauty by analyzing and rearranging the techniques. For example, regarding the colors of her pieces, she began to delve into the question of what inspired her interest in lacquerware. She found that the answer could be found in the colors, with red and black as the base colors and gold for the lines. Used in numerous kinds of lacquerware, these are the color combinations we all think about when it comes to lacquerware. These colors have been used in religious services since ancient times in Japan. Deeply connected with Japanese culture, these colors have power. She subconsciously responded to this power and became interested in lacquerware.
However, when expressing her thoughts with lacquerware, she did not choose commonly-used techniques such as “maki-e” or “kyushitsu.” When she learned about the “fuki-urushi” technique and saw grains of Japanese horse chestnut wood, she decided to combine them. She managed to enhance the hidden beauty of the wood.
Maki-e: a lacquerware technique in which decorative patterns are drawn with lacquer on the surface of the lacquerware, and then metal powders are placed onto the surface of the lacquerware.
Kyushitsu: a lacquerware technique in which solid-colored lacquer is painted without any decorative patterns.
Fuki-urushi: a lacquerware technique in which transparent-colored lacquer is painted and then wiped clean a few times so that the wood grains are visible without any decorative patterns.
Lacquerware is traditionally created by multiple divisions of labor. However, she intentionally does all her own work for each step of the creation process so that her thoughts and feelings are fully expressed in each component. She does this to expand her sensibilities.
She says “My goal is to find out how to express my feelings while using traditional techniques, figure out exactly what I want to do and pursue the possibilities.”