Dry Lacquer

Chinese dry-lacquer
sculpture.

Discover the materials, history and living traditions of Buddhist sculpture made with lacquer and cloth.

The CraftHistoric Works
A seated Buddha in dark lacquer with traces of gilding and of red and green pigment; both hands are missing.
Buddha, probably AmitabhaChina · early 7th century
The Met · 19.186
A seated Buddha with a dark, worn lacquer surface; both hands are missing.
Buddha, c. 590. Walters Art Museum, 25.9.Image: Walters Art Museum, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The Craft

Lacquer. Cloth. Form.

In dry-lacquer sculpture, cloth and lacquer help build a body that can be shaped and decorated. Some works retain a wooden core; others are hollow.

Look inside the structure
A seated bodhisattva in dark lacquer, wearing jewelled ornaments.
Bodhisattva, 8th century. Cleveland Museum of Art, 1983.86.Image: Cleveland Museum of Art, CC0

Historic Works

A history in objects.

Four museum records offer a starting point. Each object has its own date, construction and conservation history.

  1. c. 590The Walters Buddha preserves a wooden core beneath its lacquer surface.
  2. 7th centuryThe Met Buddha offers an early example of hollow dry-lacquer construction.
  3. TodayIn Tiantai, practitioners continue making sculpture and teaching the craft.
Historic works
A gilded thousand-armed Guanyin seated on a lotus pedestal inside the Palace Museum, Beijing.
Thousand-armed Guanyin. Tang Chunfu. The Palace Museum, Beijing. Overall height: 3.46 m.Photograph supplied for this website

Living Tradition

A craft still being taught.

Meet Tang Chunfu and explore the making, documentation and teaching of dry-lacquer and ramie sculpture in Tiantai.

Living tradition