It’s best to avoid trends in design — by the time someone declares one it’s probably passed anyway. But visiting the design fairs and galleries this year it has been impossible not to notice a gentle reawakening of interest in lacquerwork, last popular in the Seventies and, before that, in the Thirties. Lacquer won’t, or rather can’t, become a passing trend because the workmanship is too labour intensive and the pieces often too costly.
The most outstanding lacquer creations I have seen — all shown here — are both bold and beautiful. Aldo Bakker’s Green Table for Karakter has great presence, due to its arresting colour that sits somewhere between moss, grass, olive and bottle green (karakter-copenhagen.com). Its deep lustre and chunky form, where curves and flat planes meet harmoniously, is typical of the work of this Amsterdam-based designer. The console was crafted using urushi, a traditional Japanese lacquer made from sap extracted from the urushi tree. Thirty individual layers are applied, each one left to dry in a warm, dust-free, humid environment for a day or two before it’s sanded, polished and buffed by hand. It is this process that gives it the subtle variations in shade and colour and add to the piece’s sense of depth and life. One item takes a year to make.
The Rhinoceros Screen is a collaborative piece by the artist François-Xavier Lalanne, known for his frequent use of animal imagery, and Kazuhide Takahama, a Japanese architect who has designed furniture for the leading Italian manufacturers Gavina and Simon (subsequently sold to Knoll and Cassina respectively), and responsible for introducing glossy lacquer into industrial design in the Seventies. The screen from Simon’s Ultramobile series of 1976 is made of lacquered wood with a serigraph print. Nero Design in Arezzo, Italy, has one of the few screens produced (nero-design.it).
The Paris-based designer Pierre Charpin has created the Hipparque centrepieces for Hermès, presented this spring at Milan’s Salone del Mobile. Here, too, the lacquer technique originates in Japan, but the pieces are produced in Vietnam. Lighter layers are applied over darker shades which gives a pleasing effect, especially visible on the rim. By cutting the concave-shaped tops in half, a little like the head of a screw, Charpin has deliberately increased the amount of edge to accentuate this layered-colour effect. There are three different-sized pieces in the set, one in green (£660), orange (£800) and red (£1,310), available in Hermès stores (hermes.com).
With strong investment pieces like these, you need to give them enough space in your home or office to be able to appreciate fully their outstanding colour, a depth that only lacquer can offer. They will work best when placed against a dark wall, lit like a good painting, which allows the silky lustre to really shine.
Nick Vinson is editor at large at Wallpaper*