Conservation of Asian Lacquer: A Symposium

In January of 2000, the Conservation Department at the Asian Art Museum hosted a three-day international workshop on Asian lacquer conservation. Experts from Asia, North America, and Europe gathered in San Francisco to share their knowledge and compare approaches to the analysis and treatment of this specialized material. Attendees included conservators Helena Jaeschke, Shosai Kitamura, Lan Zhang, Frank Minney, Jane Norman, Barbara Piert-Borgers, and Marianne Webb. The workshop was organized by Asian Art Museum Head of Conservation Donna Strahan with AAM conservators Mark Fenn and Jane Williams assisting. Over the course of the workshop, each invited speaker examined a different group of lacquered objects, and then presented his or her unique perspective on the conservation problems they represented.

Participants in Asian Lacquer Symposium, 2000
Symposium participants, left to right: Jane Williams, Yoshiko Kakudo, Frank Minney, Shigeru Kitamura, Shosai Kitamura, Helena Jaeschke, Donna Strahan, Lan Zhang, Jane Norman, Marianne Webb, Barbara Piert-Borgers and Mark Fenn.

Following the symposium, the lacquer objects under consideration were treated using the essays and workshop discussions as resource material. Finally, the seven essays presented at the symposium were integrated with the treatment records into a single volume edited by Jane Williams under the title The Conservation of Asia Lacquer. The book is available as a downloadable pdf file free of charge below:

The Conservation of Asian Lacquer

Case Studies at the Asian Art Museum, San Francisco
By Jane L. Williams

with contributions from Donna Strahan, Rowan Geiger, Helena Jaeschke, Shosai Kitamura, Frank Minney, Jane Norman, Barbara Piert-Borgers, Marianne Webb, and Zhang Lan

This publication was made possible by a generous grant from the Getty Grant Program.

Repairing lacquer