00:00The art of lacquerware is an intense craft that demands total commitment from the artist.
00:07Even the teeniest piece like this one takes at minimum half a year to complete.
00:12It's very much a matter of watching paint dry, as dozens if not hundreds of layers of varnish are applied and dry one by one.
00:20And then there's the painstaking sanding needed to make the piece shine.
00:24This workshop, the Lai family workshop, is especially renowned for the number of layers it can manage to place on a single object, sometimes in the hundreds.
00:33And they've been doing it this way for decades.
00:35It hasn't always been easy.
00:37Like other craftspeople, the Lai's took some time to regain their footing after plastic took over the market and exports stalled sometime around the 1960s.
00:46But they've found a way to keep the lights on and pass on their skills.
00:50The Lai's aren't the only ones in the business focused on fine art these days.
01:12The Wong workshop dates back to the very earliest days of this craft in Taiwan, brought around a century ago by Japanese colonists.
01:19At 105 years old, patriarch Wang Jing Shuang, educated at the Tokyo School of Fine Arts, is still using a brush, though mostly for paintings rather than the everyday goods he once produced.
01:31At this studio, each layer of lacquer takes a month to dry.
01:35And a painting can have dozens of layers in some of its more textured places.
01:39Still, there's some regret in the family about the disappearance of lacquer as functional as well as fine art.
01:45And a sense that just maybe, it's time for a comeback.
01:48This is a war of lacquer.
01:50Now that we're going to go home with a improper business model, Partie products is still as well as my beau castle.
01:53Only once again, only all in the wedding, just to make it to the clip.
01:59And maybe it could happen.
02:25Elementary schools like this could be the starting point.
02:28Lacquer shop owner Chiu Jun Zhang doesn't just teach kids about lacquer.
02:35He shows them how to make simple lacquerware items themselves, things like chopsticks.
02:40This hands-on learning is stimulating.
02:51And Chiu hopes the start of a lifelong engagement with the art form.
02:55Taiwan's lacquer artists have been honing their skills for a century, and they're confident the standards of art they've achieved have a future just as proud as their past.
03:07John Suu and John Van Trieste for Taiwan Plus.
03:10Taiwan's lacquer artists have been honing their skills for a century, and they're confident the standards of art they've achieved have a future just as proud as their past.
03:19John Suu and John Van Trieste for Taiwan Plus.
03:26You
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