Junko Yashiro 八代淳子 was awarded an MFA in Urushi (Lacquer) Arts from the Department of Crafts, Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music, Japan, in 1995. It is the only national university in Japan specialising in lacquer arts.
Yashiro has relocated to Karuizawa, Nagano, with her family over ten years ago. She began her home studio and started making limited lacquerware of unique design. Yashiro handcrafts every lacquerware piece from a log of wood till the final touch of the decoration.
Fuki-urushi technique is represented well in her lacquerware design. Thin coating of lacquer is applied evenly on the wood surface to highlight natural beauty of the grains.
Junko Yashiro’s unique maki-e method is to apply coloured lacquer using her handcrafted wooden stamp and decorate each piece of her lacquerware by hand.
Flat Bowl (red) by Junko YASHIRO
The value of a piece of lacquerware only begins with the materials used to make it. A high quality piece of lacquerware requires the skills of several different elements: lacquer, layers, core materials, decoration, colours, design and process.
