# Maki-e (蒔絵) — image generation prompt
# IndexStyle No.519 — https://indexstyle.org/styles/maki-e
# Style descriptors only. This prompt names no artist, studio, brand or work.

Produce four original images in the visual language of Maki-e, a technique from Vessel and Craft Techniques, Heian period–.

## What to make

Make the kind of thing this style exists for: briefing a workshop for gold decoration on a black lacquer ground, on ware or on objects such as pens, or designing a gold treatment whose tonal range comes from grain size instead of a flat colour fill. Choose one subject and hold it across all four images.

## What has to be visible

- 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

Someone who knows this style should be able to point at each of these in the finished image.

## How to build it

- Layout and structure: 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
- Type and lettering: 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
- Material and surface: 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
- Colour: #B7AE97 carries the ground, #C9A227 is the colour the style is remembered by, #100D0B holds text and outlines. Read off real works, so treat them as a direction rather than a fixed palette.
- What it should feel like: luxury, calm, technique

## What goes wrong

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.

## Across the four

Keep every cue above present in all four. Vary the framing, the scale and the arrangement so the set shows the range this style covers rather than four versions of one picture.

## Constraints

- Do not imitate, reference or name any specific artist, studio, brand, character or copyrighted work.
- Do not reproduce the composition of an existing work.
- Produce original compositions in the general period language described above.

Full design spec: https://indexstyle.org/styles/maki-e/design.md