‘Son mai’ – the painstaking Vietnamese art of lacquer painting (via Tuoi Tre News)
about 66 months ago (12/03/2018)
'Son mai' – the painstaking Vietnamese art of lacquer painting (via Tuoi Tre News) | ArtsEquator Thinking and Talking about Arts and Culture in Southeast Asia Articles December 3, 2018 Once chiefly employed in the decoration of wooden objects, son mai , or lacquer painting, has grown over the last century into a freestanding art form in Vietnam, to a point where it is now widely considered to be the country’s national painting technique. The traditional Vietnamese lacquer used in son mai is made by mixing the resin from a Japanese wax tree with natural pigments to create different colored paints. “Resin from the Japanese wax tree was initially used by ancient Vietnamese as a solvent for coatings on wooden decorations,” said Nguyen Thanh Binh, a lacquer painter.