udukuri – 大作社

2013.10

for Hashikura Matsukan by | n meister

For four centuries, the town of Obama in Fukui Prefecture, Japan, has manufactured lacquered chopsticks. Obama’s lacquered chopsticks have been recognised as the hardest and most beautiful of Japanese lacquer chopsticks since the seventeenth century, when they became known as ‘Wakasa-nuri’. We designed new chopsticks in collaboration with Hashikura Matsukan, a manufacturer who continue Obama’s traditional manufacturing techniques today. We used the udukuri process, in which the wood surface is carved away with a metal brush, leaving only the hard wood grain, then lacquered the chopsticks and polished them again to bring out the wood grain as pattern. The traditional technique, in which materials clamshells, eggshells and gold leaf are applied with the lacquer then polished away to reveal a pattern is known as ‘togidashi’ (literally ‘to polish and show’), and is particular to Wakasa-nuri. Unlike patterns drawn by hand, this combination of processes allows patterns from nature to appear organically.

四个世纪以来，日本福井县的奥巴马镇制造了漆筷子。自17世纪以来，奥巴马的漆筷子被认为是日本最难和最美的漆器筷子，当时它们被称为“Wakasa-nuri”。我们与Hashikura Matsukan合作设计了新的筷子，Hashikura Matsukan是一家继承奥巴马传统制造技术的制造商。我们使用了udukuri工艺，其中木材表面用金属刷雕刻掉，只留下坚硬的木纹，然后涂上筷子并再次抛光以将木纹作为图案。传统技术，其中材料蛤壳，蛋壳和金箔与漆一起使用然后抛光以显示图案被称为'togidashi'（字面意思是'抛光和显示'），并且特别是Wakasa-nuri。与手工绘制的图案不同，这种过程组合允许来自自然的图案有机地出现。