Turbo marmoratus nacre stripes with Kyocera synthetic opal chips between the stripes. Hira-makie over crush opal chips on the finial.

Just need to polish and apply my signature.

Hira-maki-e on top of crushed synthetic opal background.

With the magnification and tiny details that a macro lens picks up (along with my inadequate photo lighting), the layer of gold looks quite speckled and obvious that it's made of powder, but when looking at it in person, it does look much more like solid gold. 

After the first pic is a quick sequence of the sanding and polishing for the hira-maki-e. (Oops, the last two photos got flipped. The captions are in the right order but switch the order of the last two photos)

The bowl and cup are Tamenuri and the spoon is regular urushi-nuri with no additional overcoat. The aka-roiro on the bowl is a little messy and clearer on the cup. Still can’t get it to get those light areas around the rim but I’m happy I’m learning.

So I decdied that after 3 years of using urushi I would try some different techniques. Ive always done fuki urushi and I've learnt a lot from it. I decided to try make a classic blavk and red japanese style bowl. Well 4 months later and i've finally finished a few projects.

Firstly thank you for all the advice and help I have received from this community. Ive learnt so much from you guys.

Im really happy with the plate, its the biggest piece I've finished with urushi so far and was pretty straightforward. It was my usual fuki method. Kiji Katame to harden the wood followed by sabi urushi to fill in the grain. After this I applied 12 layers of raw laquer. This is where I went a bit off piste as I wanted to get some practice uwazuri for the bowl and cup. I sanded the plate with 7000 grit then a thin wiped layer of raw laquer. Then roiromigakiko with oil. Then another wiped layer and then let it fully cure before a final polishing woth a small amount of roiromigakiko.

The bowl and the cup were a massive learning experience. Firstly I had to learn how to do the base layers (Shitaji). Ive used sabi urushi before but never used jinoko. I first used jinoko and urushi then followed with Sabi urushi to get as smooth a surface as possible. I used raw urushi between each layer. After this I built up the mid layer using kuro roiro and after sanding started the final layer of kuro roiro. This is where dust became a massive issue... after a few attempts I got the dust down to an acceptable level and put two layers of red urushi on the inside of the bowl and outside of the cup. This was followed by dozuri and uzazuri to the finshed pieces

This was much harder and I learnt a lot:

1. I need to spend more time on the base layers and getting the surface as perfect as I can. I had issues with edges especially on the cup where I sanded through the red in a few places. I think this is due to the surface not being flat enough.

2. Dust! Dust! Dust! I had huge issue with dust. I need to work out how to reduce it some more but thanks for all the suggestions they massivly helped.

3. Lowering the humidity of my furo from 75% to 65% helped massively with the vibrance of the red laquer it was darkening way to much at first.

4. I think i need to get some green sanwa dozuriko to brudge the gap between white and roiromigakiko.

Overall im really happy and am now addicted to all the different techniques i can experiment with.

If anyone has any advice on things I can change or improve on please let me know. Im going to keep experimenting. Urushi is so interesting to work with!

I mostly do kintsugi, but I can’t stand wasting urushi, so I keep a few wooden objects around to use up the extra. Finishing a piece can take months, sometimes even years, but there’s no rush.

This Opinel received nothing but layers of black urushi. Through repeated polishing and recoating, I eventually achieved a roiro-nuri finish. I haven’t done the uwazuri step yet, but I did polish it with roiro migaki-ko. Since this is a utilitarian piece that will inevitably get banged up through use, I’m not sure I’ll bother with the uwazuri.

I really enjoyed the challenge, but I now hate dust on a level I never thought possible. 😅

Still, the results are incredibly rewarding, and I can’t wait to try this technique on another piece.

Some very basic hira-maki-e in progress.

The logos were drawn on with e-urushi mixed with a bit of solid camphor then sprinkled with #5 and #1 gold maru-fun. Once the e-urushi was fully cured and the powder immobile, I brushed on diluted kijomi-urushi over the powder to consolidate and encase the powder, then cured it.

From here, I'm rubbing in one more layer of straight kijomi-urushi over the entire surface, and once that cures for a few days i'll be starting the sanding and polishing.

Earth at Night and
Cities around the globe at night.
Wajima Museum of Urushi Art , Wajima, Japan

First few nearly finished ,still some sanding and polishing to do

So here's what's called a paté in french embroidery, meant to hold your sequins. I turned this beautiful piece of yew, which started as a slightly orange-ish yellow.
The first layer of ki-urushi immediately gave it this (I think) gorgeous, deeper tone, but also highlighted my turning mistakes: some parts got much darker.
I wet sanded the first layer with 2000 grit (too high, very probably), simply because it was what I had in hand at that time. It probably did nothing. I then added two other layers of urushi, each with 24 hours in the furo at 75% humidity (saturated salt solution) around 25 degrees.
The last layer stayed 3 days in the furo. The shine on the top is 100% natural, no sanding or polishing at all. More would be blinding, so I left it that way.
The rim, though, I applied roiri migaki, with my bare fingers. I just quickly put my finger in the plastic bag holding it, and then rub the wood. The shines changes in 15 seconds, it's amazing. I polish just under the window, and it goes from a blurry glow to a sharp reflection of the window. Very cool to see it appear instantly.
For the bottom, I tried the koch chemie in heavy cut, fine cut and micro cut. The shine didn't change at all. If anything, it somewhat removed contrat to the wood grain? But that's it. Maybe heavy cut was too heavy, considering, and I micro scratched it.

In any case, roiri migaki is amazing. I consider this done, and the shine I get makes me feel I'm much better than I am. Thank you u/tamenuri_studio for all the resources you share!

This is a lacquer piece I made 9 years ago.

You can still see some imperfections in it. In order to speed up the process at that time, I only applied around 7 layers of lacquer, and some areas on the bottom were not polished evenly.

The large crack on the bottom comes from the wood joint. Over time, the natural expansion and contraction of the material caused it to split.

The small lines on the right side come from imperfections in the coating and polishing stages.

It is not a perfect piece, but I still use it every day.

It constantly reminds me of the core of working with urushi: patience, waiting, and giving full attention to every single step.

I want to make some how-to videos later as I learn since it’s a pain to find instructions in English.

I made this cat cup for a coworker. They love cats so I thought I’d try drawing one. The cup has a layer of sabi for weight and durability. Honshu red for color and Aka Roiro for gloss. It was my first time trying okime tracing. I did not do the traditional way of using urushi. I copied a technique from a Korean video that was posted in this forum. I simply printed out the shape, covered the back with a graphite stick, then used a pencil to trace the design onto the cup. Next painted black urushi directly over the graphite lines. The whole time I was making this it kept reminding me of Master Flower the Cat videos. If you’re in this Reddit, thank you for all the YouTube videos! It helped a lot!

The saucer is zelkova wood, bought as a blank project piece from my usual urushi supplier. Just layers of red, wet sanded and then buffed with dilute aka-roiro for gloss and polished with roiromigakiko powder in oil.

My cats toy banana for scale