The beautiful lacquer (laca) pieces we feature
come from two different states in Mexico. The brightly colored plates
and gourds with a black background come from Michoacan and the more
muted boxes, trays and gourds come from Guerrero. All of the pieces
are created by master artists using traditional techniques that
involve many layers of shellac, each layer followed by polishing
to achieve a high gloss.
The process is painstaking. The artist creates
his own special mixture of shellac made with, among other things,
grease extracted from insects and chía oil. Chía oil
helps prevent lacquer from cracking and makes it resistant to wear.
In addition, most artists mix their own pigments from natural substances
and use a variety of traditional hand tools to etch complex designs
on the pieces to create the desired effect.
