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| Lacquer painting on a coffin in a tomb of the Warring States period. | The oldest lacquer ware, in fact a wooden bowl, was unearthed from ruins of the Hemudu culture at Yuyao County, Zhejiang Province, which was produced about 7,000 years ago. Bits of a red pain1 on the bowl's inside are seen, which has been identified as a kind of raw lacquer. From ruins of the Liangzhu culture that existed 3,000 years ago in the same province, archeologists found a lacquered cup inlaid with jade pieces, suggesting that people living at the time were already acquainted with combined use of lacquering and jade carving to produce artworks. In
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| Lacquer paintings unearthed from a tomb of the East Kingdom (222-280). | other words, lacquer works of the Liangzhu culture were no longer purely for practical use.
Lacquer works constitute a special branch of China's traditional arts and crafts, which are objects with wooden or silk skeletons smooth or glossy with the inner and outer surfaces coated with several to a few dozen layers of lacquer. Lacquer coating was done just for decoration when people were yet to know that lacquer is resistant to acid and alkali erosion and is also humidity-proof. |
