TITLE:
Study on the Appearance and Peel Strength of Byakudan-Nuri Works
AUTHORS:
Chieko Narita, Atsushi Endo, Yutaro Shimode, Kazushi Yamada
KEYWORDS:
Urushi (Urushi Natural Lacquer); Gold Tooling; Byakudan-Nuri; Traditional Crafts
JOURNAL NAME:
Materials Sciences and Applications,
Vol.5 No.2,
February
25,
2014
ABSTRACT: This paper focuses on Byakudan-nuri, one of the traditional decoration techniques of Japanese Urushi (Urushi natural lacquer) crafts. Works produced by Byakudan-nuri express a unique luster color owing to painting gold or silver leaves along with highly transparent Urushi. The specific problem of Byakudan-nuri is the exfoliation of Urushi off the metal leaf surface, to solve a lot of repair work which is done nowadays. For Byakudan-nuri, silver leaf is preferred to a gold leaf. This paper tries to clarify the influence of the different kinds of metal leaves on the appearance and peel strength of works of Byakudan-nuri and, moreover, to elucidate the reason why silver leaf has been used more frequently for Byakudan-nuri until now. It was found out that the reason for the more frequent use of silver leaf in Byakudan-nuri is that silver does not seem to affect the appearance and peel strength in works produced by this technique.