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Japanese lacquer-painting, (1898). Examples of lacquerware designs: 'Figs 1-50. Motives [motifs] for lacker-painting...Of all productions of Japanese art, lacker-ware has attained a high and well-deserved celebrity long since; for this work shows an unrivalled technical perfection resulting from a traditional manufacture transmitted in the course of centuries from generation to generation within certain families...The ground-material, consisting according to the intended purpose either of wood, layers of paper, papier-mache or plaited bast, after being smoothed on the surface by means of resin, is covered with as many coats of lacker, as the intended fineness of the articles requires. The most precious objects get sometimes as many as twenty such lacker-coatings and the necessary manipulations require a great deal of time and trouble...Lacker is supplied by nature as a ready product from the sap of a tree in different qualities..'. Plate 13 from "The Historic Styles of Ornament" translated from the German of H. Dolmetsch. [B.T. Batford, London, 1898] (KEYSTONE/HERITAGE IMAGES/The Print Collector)