It was late September when we visited Master Junichi Hakose (箱瀬淳一) at his work shop, Hakose Koubou (箱瀬工房) in Wajima (輪島), Ishikawa-prefecture.

At that time, he was extremely busy preparing for the coming exhibition at WAKO Ginza, Tokyo, which will be the one of the largest exhibition in his life time.  He plans to exhibit his works of more than 600 pieces, basically all newly created for the exhibition.

The WAKO exhibition is schedule to be held in Nov.21(Sat)  – Nov.30(Mon) this year.

In order fulfill the depth of the exhibition, Mr. Hakose was in his challenge to create further new world of  expression with maki-e decoration designs. He was especially challenging with maki-e theme under his big theme of Maki-e Past & Present.  Of course he had many of his standard maki-e design theme from his past original expressions, however that was not enough for the size of the challenge, also along with the passion to pave a new way.

So Mr. Hakose created several special new series. One was  called “Collage”, which is really a collage of images from past and present of  Japanese culture and lifestyles. He was actively working on this “Collage series” when we visited  his place.

 

Mr. Hakose was a little nervous for  structuring collage images on each different piece.  Yes, you would understand why he was a little nervous when you see the created results using the cutout image. They were extremely extraordinary, which I think no one had ever seen such design maki-e lacquerware.  Such that one had alphabet words taken from an English newspaper and the other had just big number “2”and “1” in a Gothic type font in the middle of a box.

Mr. Hakose swiftly works on his creations one by one; while guiding his several apprentices  how they should carry out the tasks he had given.

The “Collage series” was coming out in a very unique and modern way, like shown in right, with real new ways of expression in the lacquerware.

 

Although he had been preparing for this exhibition for more than three years with full speed, still he had many unfinished pieces left to decide the design and to do  maki-e decorations with the deadline being extremely close by.

However amazingly there was no compromise in his taking time to pursue and challenge the limit of his creativity without  any rushes.

He would stop working and gaze at the object with a stern look for a while and then start working again.

 

Mr.Hakose had another totally new series with a methodology that he had never tried before.  It was to use a free flow of colored urushi lacquer. In the world of painting it is very common to use free flow of liquid paint; however it is very uncommon in the lacquerware industry. It was also first time for us to see the methodology.

Mr.Hakose was preparing several pieces of  large thick round plate with lotus on water design and he said that the free flows of red and blue colored lacquers are an expression of the sunset reflecting on the water.

After working on couple of plates of free flow red lacquers with couple of streaks from one direction each, he tried the next plate with one flow from one side and the other from the opposite side.

 

 

At first, I thought that would mess up the whole impression. But, the result was not !

The dual direction one was the best piece. He also thought so and he was very happy with the result and said; “You never know unless you actually do, you need to try everything to get a better outcome!”. I agreed!

The pieces were very new and modern and looked good. However they still were expected to have many more processes before complete. Woo, still long way.

Cheers to Mr. Hakose’s  challenge!

Please keep up the excellent work!!

We will expect to see the WAKO Exhibition !!!