Kenji Honma, a wood and lacquer artist, balances age-old Japanese traditions with new self-taught techniques. Kenji employs traditional inherited skills when working with his Urushi lacquer, yet his process, incorporating the split and hollowed Urushi tree, creating a kind of inverted mirror of the tree itself, is an innovative development of the historical practice of working with lacquer. His work Four Tiered Boxes has recently been acquired by the National Craft Museum in Japan.
The lacquer Kenji hand harvests from his own crop of trees, scoring the bark and collecting the resin, gathering only about 180 grams per decade old tree. Once the lacquer is extracted and the raw material depleted, he then uses the timber from these exhausted trees for his artworks. The outer shapes are formed by boldly striking the cut timber of the Urushi trees, clefting them with a hatchet in one fell swoop. Preserving the original shape of the tree, Kenji then hollows out the insides and fits the artwork with a bottom plate to create his vessel forms. Kenji also incorporates a traditional lacquer-work technique - “nashiji-nuri” - where he coats the insides of his vessels with a lacquer sprinkled with tin powder or stone powder to create a captivating sparkling effect.
Kenji Honma, a wood and lacquer artist, balances age-old Japanese traditions with new self-taught techniques. Kenji employs traditional inherited skills when working with his Urushi lacquer, yet his process, incorporating the split and hollowed Urushi tree, creating a kind of inverted mirror of the tree itself, is an innovative development of the historical practice of working with lacquer. His work Four Tiered Boxes has recently been acquired by the National Craft Museum in Japan.The lacquer Kenji hand harvests from his own crop of trees, scoring the bark and collecting the resin, gathering only about 180 grams per decade old tree. Once the lacquer is extracted and the raw material depleted, he then uses the timber from these exhausted trees for his artworks. The outer shapes are formed by boldly striking the cut timber of the Urushi trees, clefting them with a hatchet in one fell swoop. Preserving the original shape of the tree, Kenji then hollows out the insides and fits the artwork with a bottom plate to create his vessel forms. Kenji also incorporates a traditional lacquer-work technique - “nashiji-nuri” - where he coats the insides of his vessels with a lacquer sprinkled with tin powder or stone powder to create a captivating sparkling effect.
