Kōami Family

Kōami Family (flourished 19th century) was a group of Japanese lacquerware artists who were eminent for 19 generations in the Muromachi, Azuchi-Momoyama, and Tokugawa periods. Michinaga (1410–78) was a personal attendant to the military ruler Ashikaga Yoshimasa and excelled in two techniques of lacquer design. The takamaki-e technique consists of building decorative motifs with a mixture of lacquer putty, white lead, lampblack, camphor, and gold or silver foil in relief against a lacquer ground. In...