Vand Tray
- Hanami Kōbō
- Rune Bakke
- Objects
- 2024
The commission from the Kyoto workshop was open: make something for a table, in urushi, in quantities their four lacquerers could actually produce. We proposed the least ceremonial object we could think of.
Vand is a tray in the sense that it holds things, but it does not enclose them. Two opposite edges rise 14 mm; the other two are flush with the base. The result is that the object reads as a plane rather than a box, that it stacks, and that a hand approaching from either open side meets no wall.
The body is a laminated hinoki core, turned and then finished in twelve coats of urushi over five weeks — eight of ground, four of colour, each polished back before the next. The colour is a very dark brown that reads as black under most light and reveals itself as brown only near a window. The underside is left in a matte finish; only the upper face is polished, which halves the labour and doubles the difference between the two surfaces.
Every tray carries the workshop's mark and the lacquerer's, pressed into the underside before the final coat. They are not identical and are not sold as if they were.
The object is dishwasher-hostile, sunlight-hostile and expected to last several generations, which is the correct trade for a piece made this way.