Maki-e

蒔絵 / Heian period– / Technique / Vessel and Craft Techniques

A family of Japanese decorating techniques in which powdered gold, silver or coloured pigment is sprinkled onto lacquer while it is still damp. The name means sprinkled picture, and by the Heian period these techniques had become the dominant way of decorating Japanese lacquerware. Tone is built from how coarse the powder is and how densely it falls, not from mixing colour.

Maki-e — Nakayama Komin, sweetmeat container with insect-cage maki-e decoration, 19th century, Tokyo National Museum — Wikimedia Commons / Public domain — Nakayama Komin, sweetmeat container with insect-cage maki-e decoration, 19th century, Tokyo National Museum — Wikimedia Commons / Public domain

Maki-e — Footed stand with phoenix and paulownia maki-e decoration, Edo period, 18th century, Tokyo National Museum — Wikimedia Commons / CC0 — Footed stand with phoenix and paulownia maki-e decoration, Edo period, 18th century, Tokyo National Museum — Wikimedia Commons / CC0 · CC0

Maki-e — Gourd-shaped sake bottle with hollyhock-crest maki-e decoration, Edo period, 18th century — Wikimedia Commons / CC0 — Gourd-shaped sake bottle with hollyhock-crest maki-e decoration, Edo period, 18th century — Wikimedia Commons / CC0 · CC0

At a glance

Visual cues

Gold imagery that appears to sit below the surface of a black lacquer ground
The same gold reading as visible grain where the powder is coarse and as a smooth sheet where it is fine
Motif edges formed by a change in powder density rather than by a drawn outline
Flat passages of gold from applied kirikane foil set among the sprinkled areas

Best used for

Briefing a workshop for gold decoration on a black lacquer ground, on ware or on objects such as pens
Designing a gold treatment whose tonal range comes from grain size instead of a flat colour fill

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Dictionary entry

Type: If text is needed, write it in the same powder as the ornament and keep the strokes light enough to sit inside the black. Never outline it.
Composition: Leave most of the black ground open and let the motif run toward one side of the object. Always reserve a plain area for light to travel across.
Material: Lay the lacquer and sprinkle gold, silver or coloured powder before it dries. Build light and dark from grain size and density, and add kirikane foil where a flat sheet of gold is wanted.
Caution: Filling the gold as one flat area discards the technique itself, since in maki-e the tonal range comes from how coarse the powder is and how densely it lands.
Further study: how far the same gold reads as different brightness across works using different powder grades / the treatment of the boundary between areas laid with cut gold foil and areas sprinkled with powder / how the density of the pattern and the amount of black ground left change between Heian period work and later work

Related entries

Mingei (民藝)Shared effects: Calm.Compare Maki-e and Mingei
Sukiya Style (数寄屋)Shared effects: Calm / Luxury.Compare Maki-e and Sukiya Style

Often confused with

Kintsugi (金継ぎ)compare

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