Simplified Chinese lacquer techniques and Nanban style decoration on Luso-Asian objects from the late sixteenth or early seventeenth centuries

摘要

The meeting of multiple cultures and their mutual influence during the Portuguese expansion in Asia led to theemergence of different types of fusion styles in objects commissioned by the settlers, merchants, and religiousorders present in Portuguese India. The east-Asian lacquer coatings of modestly sized wooden objects ofvarious types dating from the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries have been analyzed as part of theresearch for a doctoral thesis that aims to establish their cultural and geographical attribution within the contextof the Getty Conservation Institute’s lacquer research project. Among the objects were three seventeenthcenturylacquered trays from Portuguese museums and private collections that had previously been classifiedas Japanese Nanban, Chinese or Ryukyuan lacquers or even as Indo-Portuguese artifacts. The materials andtechniques that were identified show close similarities with Chinese techniques mentioned in historic accounts— the only existing Ming Chinese Treatise on lacquering Xiushi lu and the eighteenth-century memoirs of theJesuit priest d’Incarville. These nearly 400-year-old artifacts are among the first lacquered objectscommissioned by Europeans and probably the first of Chinese origin. Their detailed technical studycontributes to international lacquer research and complements existing knowledge and perceptions of thelacquering processes that were applied in response to an early European demand for exotic items.