The first lacquer bow found in Hemudo, Zhejiang, China. Diameter: 10.6 cm, Height :5.7cm

「Feng」is a bamboo basket. It was one of my art pieces back in 1993. The basket has its shiny look because the bamboo was first coated with raw lacquer prior to the start of weaving the bamboo. It was not an easy job, especially since the stiffness of the bamboo made it even harder to weave. To overcome the problem, cloth tape was used in order to make sure the bamboos were nicely flattened and this was followed by stabilizing them with wires. Repeating the steps of tying, twisting and stabilizing the wires with the main body object is the only way to make sure that it does not break part, as more coatings of lacquer is needed in the very end. I had to keep on doing it every night and without any other leisure. It is sort of like stitching a textile, stitch by stitch. Normally, vines have to be dyed into colors and the stitching strings have to accompany the same color as the vines in order to yield some kind of ancient style pattern/design quality.