“The noun son mai (lacquer) is a new noun named to refer to an earlier technique called Son Ta but was tranformed by the lacquer art.
The Son Ta technique is similar to Son Tau, dating back to the Han’s dynasty. Being used with Son Ta was a material named Son song. This particular material, in Vietnam, Phu Tho province produces a lot and still sells to China and Japan.
From 1931 onwards, the use of Son Ta as well as Son Tau in China and Son Nhat in Japan was being covered on things to decorate it, on common things such as: trays, caskets, clogs, worship objects like: incense stick, dishes, decorations like sentence, diagram, screen… typical colours: traditional crimson, black, brown, puce, gold and silver. To be clear, Son Ta only had decoration purposes, its place was in decoration. Although in Japan, the lacquer art was the most elegant but had not any countries thought about exploring, implementing paint differently from traditional way, venturing in art to find a new way for promoting the value of fine art by inventing more its abilities.
However, from 1931 afterwards, by the earnest exploring of some talented artists who left oil paint to lean on lacquer, Son Ta had gone above the confining place, balantly went on the immense road of art, the unfamiliar field. From the caskets, the clogs, it transcended precious framed painting, from a depended means to decorate things, it became a unique means of expressing the artist’s soul, a means overwhelms oil paint.
Forgetting the past, Son Ta changed its elegant name to Lacquer”
To Ngoc Van
“From a depended means to decorate things, it became a unique means of expressing the artist’s soul” – From the art’s perspective, Lacquer is considered one of the art material.
It is not just refer to the creating development by Vietnamese artist, not only the exploration and technique development of Vietnam conventional handcraft lacquer into skillful lacquer techniques but now lacquer has also become a pure Vietnamese term which is close to Vietnamese fine arts.
Lacquer not only expresses in usual art techniques’ outlook such as: outline and colours, skills and emotions, creativity and standard but also on lacquer material, with the extreme, skillful skills in composing process, each artwork was formed by the creativity of the artist, by the sublimation of art.
Lacquer artworks has touched the art-loving community’s heart. Moreover, lacquer material easily enter an individual’s mind because it is close to Vietnamese and Oriented lifestyle, it is the material from the civilization of agriculture so it transmits culture, art to the community closely and easily.
One of the wonderful things which not every art material can be compared to lacquer is the emotional maintenance for a long period. Each artwork might not be finished in a short time, but completing an artwork with lacquer material requires a long period, with manifold processes. The challenge for the artist is to be creative in using materials but still able to maintain the emotion until the artwork is done. By that time, a lacquer work is truly an artwork.
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