Tuesday 19 February 2008

Zeshin's hare

This is a little piece I made about 9 years ago. It's based on a lacquer piece by the celebrated Japanese artist Shibata Zeshin. He was a friend of the metal worker Kano Natsuo and seemed to take great delight in simulating various metalwork effects and techniques in urushi. I have always appreciated Zeshin's work for the elegant way in which he uses colour and texture. In this exercise I tried to simulate his lacquer technique in metal. The plate itself, is shibuichi . The hare is shakudo and the moon is pure silver. It measures just over 25mm across ( 1 inch ).

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

As I always liked rabbits, I esteem that little fellow. I am particulary intrigued by the shibuichi ground.
Cheers, Karl

Ford Hallam said...

Hi Karl, I think the shibuichi is a standard 25% Ag mix. The ground is worked up with a finely textured punch, it's not etched or nashiji if that's what you were thinking. ;-)