A Bowl from Yamanaka
I finished a lacquer bowl in Yamanaka.
It began with a choice. Three bowls sat before me, each freshly turned from zelkova wood. One was more traditional, another more contemporary. I chose the one between them: simple, balanced, resolved.
Next came the lacquer. I chose a translucent amber finish and was handed two pairs of gloves to wear, one layered over the other. Urushi can irritate the skin much like poison ivy. The process itself was surprisingly simple. I brushed the lacquer onto the wood, then polished most of it away again with a soft cloth. Gradually, the surface began to emerge.
The bowl was taken away for further layers of lacquer, polishing, and drying. A week later, it arrived by post.
I've been captivated by it ever since.
It fits the palm of my hand with a kind of inevitability. More curiously, it seems to fit the hands of everyone I hand it to. The surface has a warmth I still can't quite explain. Light gathers softly across it, while the grain shifts almost imperceptibly beneath the translucent lacquer.
For all its refinement, though, it still feels like something from the forest.
Holding it, I find myself wondering about the long chain of hands behind it. Who first discovered that the sap of a tree could protect wood from heat, water, and time? Who learned that by patiently applying and polishing away layer after layer, something both practical and beautiful could emerge? And who first decided that the grain should remain visible, allowing the tree to continue speaking through the finished bowl?
I own many bowls. Very few are wooden. For years I admired lacquerware but somehow kept it at a distance.
This one is different.
I helped bring it into being, if only in a small way. And now another part of its life is waiting to begin.
Soon it will hold soup. Perhaps rice. Maybe a rustic aemono shared with friends.
The bowl will change with use. The lacquer will soften, the surface will acquire tiny marks, and the wood will deepen in color. But its deepest beauty, I suspect, will lie in the moments it fulfills its purpose. Each time it is lifted to someone's hands, it will become a little more completely itself.