Covered box

This box with lobed corners is decorated with a naturalistic ivy design that sprawls over both its exterior and interior. Sprinkled gold and silver flakes on wet lacquer (makie) create a pattern against the black lacquer background. In Japanese lacquerware, an artisan who makes the wooden core and a lacquer artist collaborate to make a work. This exquisite box is an example. The work of an anonymous craftsman whose talent is literally hidden under the layers of lacquer, gold, and silver, this wooden core is so thin that the finished thickness of the box is less than one-eighth of an inch.