LACQUER WORK. 363 



it is marked in interrupted parallel lines with a sharpened stick. 

 After drying comes smoothing with charcoal as usual, and then 

 laying on of India-ink in stripes, and a washing away of the edges, so 

 that red and black stripes alternate, but not showing any resem- 

 blance to wood. A thin coat of Se-shime and the polishing process 

 follows. The effect is surprising, but it needs a great deal of prac- 

 tice and a skilful hand, especially in rubbing with the magnolia 

 charcoal. 



This kind of Japanese lacquer ware is seldom met with in the 

 European collections. I found it in 1881, in the shop of Larkin, 

 Grafton Street, London, on a wooden vase which was made in the 

 shape of a blunted cone i meter in height, 56 centimeters in cir- 

 cumference at the bottom, and a diameter at the top of 30 centi- 

 meters. Its price was ;^ioo. The ground showed the most beau- 

 tiful imitation of red sandal-wood that I have ever seen. The 

 decorations, original of their kind, were of raised gold lacquer work 

 and inlaid with ivory and mother of pearl, and represented the 

 Schichi-ken or seven wise men of China,^ cranes and bamboo cane. 



4. Suri-hegashi-nuri, i.e. lacquer work obtained by hegu = stripping 

 off, and suri = to polish. To prepare this, a coat of black lacquer 

 (R6-iro-urushi) follows the Naka-nuri-togi, or final process of the 

 groundwork, then a slight rubbing with charcoal and water, a 

 coating of red lacquer made from cinnabar and Nashi-ji-urushi, 

 and then a second rubbing with charcoal and water. The dark 

 figures are produced by continual rubbing with sharpened charcoal 

 on particular places, even to piercing through the cinnabar lacquer. 

 The articles are repeatedly rubbed over with balls of wadding and 

 Se-shime-urushi, to fill up the hollows, and are finally polished as 

 usual after the last drying. They are coarsely marbled, or show 

 either single black spots on a red ground, or the reverse, red spots 

 on black ground. There are many variations of this process, 

 among them that in which gold-foil is spread out over a layer of 

 black or brown lacquer, and symmetrical figures are engraved in it 

 when dry, at the pleasure of the designer. Afterwards it is filled 

 up and covered with transparent lacquer, and then follows polishing. 



5. Same-gawa-nuri, i.e. " Shark-skin lacquer," or Same-dzaya, i.e. 

 " shark sword-sheath," ^ We have now to consider a peculiar 



^ These " Seven Wise Ones " (Schichi-ken) were the cynics of China, mis- 

 anthropes who went so far as to not only rend their clothes and go about naked, 

 but also to choose their place of abode in bamboo thickets, like the wild beasts. 



2 Shark skin must not be here understood to mean the coarse shark skin 

 called Shagreen, or the skin of the Hypolophus Sephen, Mull, and Henle, but the 

 skin covered with bony tubercles from the back of several species of Rhinobatus 

 or roaches of the coasts of Hither and Further India, also of Southern China, 

 especially that of Rhinobatus armatiis, Gray, and Rh. granulatus, Cuv. (See Miiller 

 and Henle : " Systematische Beschreibung der Plagiostomen," Berlin, 1841, p. 

 1 17.) At any rate I saw in the French exhibition the skin of a Rhinobatus from 

 Cochin China, marked "Pegu de Requin," and answering entirely to that used 

 in Japan. 



