What maki-e is
Maki-e draws a design in Urushi and sprinkles gold or silver powder onto it before it dries. The coarseness of the powder, the manner of sprinkling and the finishing all change the effect.
It is used alongside Raden with the work divided between them. The Kamakura-period writing box with chrysanthemums by a fence is described by Cultural Heritage Online as rendering its subjects in shell, with parts of the shell cut through or engraved and finished in sprinkled gold to bring out petals and feathers. Shell makes the forms; sprinkled gold distinguishes the detail.
The grounds are recorded too. The same box has the inside of its lid and body worked throughout in a pear-skin gold ground with the lid pattern repeated in polished sprinkled gold, while the outside of the body continues the lid in a dense gold ground with rocks and grasses in shell.
A pear-skin ground scatters gold powder and lacquers over it for a granular surface; a dense ground packs the powder more closely; and the polished type lacquers over the sprinkled powder and grinds it back to reveal the design.
In architecture
Interiors carry it. The Konjikido at Chusonji in Iwate Prefecture, completed in 1124 and recorded as a National Treasure, is described as lacquered black and covered in Kinpaku inside and out from the veranda to the eaves, with arabesques in shell over a dense gold ground on the four columns, Nageshi and Kumimono of its Naijin, and bodhisattvas painted in this technique on the columns themselves.
Painting figures on a column in sprinkled gold extends a technique of small objects to the members of a building. Gold leaf, shell inlay and sprinkled gold are all combined in the one hall.
Eishoji in Kanagawa Prefecture, founded in 1643, is recorded as an Important Cultural Property whose memorial hall, three bays square under a Hōgyō-zukuri roof, is decorated inside and out in lacquer and colour. Lacquer and paint form the base, with these techniques added at chosen points.
On site, look closely at gold patterning. A grainy surface with depth to its colour is sprinkled gold; an even, smooth sheet of gold is Kinpaku.
References
- Cultural Heritage Online: writing box with chrysanthemums by a fence, shell inlay over dense gold ground with sprinkled-gold detailing
- https://bunka.nii.ac.jp/db/heritages/detail/197350
- Cultural Heritage Online: Chusonji Konjikido, lacquered black and gilded inside and out from veranda to eaves
- https://online.bunka.go.jp/db/heritages/detail/199039
- National Cultural Properties Database: Eishoji, whose memorial hall is three bays square under a pyramidal roof
- https://kunishitei.bunka.go.jp/bsys/maindetails/102/00004634
- Cultural Heritage Online: seated Dainichi Nyorai in a shrine cabinet at Kotokuji, lacquered and gilded with a wooden halo
- https://bunka.nii.ac.jp/heritages/detail/202433
Last verified: 2026.09.11