Japanese lacquer trees go back 12,600 years, and their sap burns skin
True Asian lacquer comes from tree sap that causes a fierce skin rash when fresh, yet dries into a finish tough enough to resist water, acid and abrasion. A lacquer tree found in Japan has been radiocarbon dated to about 12,600 years ago, the oldest known, and Japanese craftsmen were lacquering objects by 7000 BCE.
Classic Asian lacquer is the treated sap of Toxicodendron vernicifluum and related trees, brushed on in many coats over a base that is usually wood. Unlike most coatings, it does not simply dry by evaporation. Its active ingredient, urushiol, is a blend of phenols in water that oxidise and link together with the help of laccase enzymes, so it actually needs warmth and humidity to set. Trees must be at least ten years old before they are tapped. Because the fresh resin triggers contact dermatitis, workers handle it with great care; the Chinese reportedly treated the allergy with crushed shellfish. In Thailand, Vietnam, Burma and Taiwan, related trees give a softer lacquer based on similar compounds, and Burmese craftsmen apply it by hand rather than brush.
China developed the craft into high art during the Shang dynasty, though its oldest surviving lacquer object, a red wooden bowl, comes from the Hemudu culture of 5000 to 4500 BC. By the Han dynasty production centres were well established, and the techniques spread to Korea and Japan. Lacquer mixed with cinnabar gives traditional Chinese red; iron oxides give red or black. Mixed with clay and layered over hemp cloth on a mould, it can even form hollow objects with no wooden core, a method the Japanese call kanshitsu.
Europe discovered it at scale through trade with Japan in the 16th and 17th centuries. Collectors including Marie-Antoinette and Maria Theresa prized pieces decorated with gold, and words like japanning trace back to that trade. The English word lacquer took a longer road, through French, Portuguese, Latin, Arabic and Persian back to Sanskrit, where it named the lac bug, whose secretion gives shellac.
Modern lacquers are something else: synthetic coatings that harden as solvents evaporate. Nitrocellulose lacquers appeared in the 19th century, and when the end of the First World War left huge surplus nitrocellulose capacity, faster-drying versions from the early 1920s swept the car industry for about 30 years, replacing slow finishes.
Source: Lacquer
