Jewel Beetle Patterned Makie Covered Box

Jewel beetles are beautiful beetles that are long and thin with green metallic lustered bodies and red and green stripes like a rainbow on their backs.
As its natural enemy, birds are afraid of things that change color, the metallic luster of jewel beetles is said to keep birds away.
During the day, they fly around broad-leaved trees such as hackberry or zelcova trees (the adult beetles eat the leaves of zelcova and other elm family plants), and stay on the underside of the leaves during the night.
The larva crawl into dead trees and eat the wood. They fly around on sunny days and move actively.
If you saw the trunk of hackberry, zelcova or yellow tree, the jewel beetles will gather around the sawn part, being attracted to the scent of the wood.
Jewel beetles can also be seen sunbathing on fences made of dried bamboo or on a dead branch sticking out, but they are very cautious and stop moving when a person comes nearby. If a person comes even closer, they will fly away or disappear into a bush.
As the color of their wings do not change even after they die, they have been used to decorate the "Tamamushi no Zushi" (small shrine decorated with jewel beetles), a national treasure owned by Horyuji in Nara.

I designed this piece by arranging leaves, flowers and fruit of hackberry into the traditional auspicious pattern "Shippo Tsunagi" (pattern of linked ovals).
I used the tamamushi shell inlay technique to express the jewel beetle and used silver-palladium alloy powder for the background.

In the old days, people believed that if you keep jewel beetles' wings in your wardrobe, the number of kimonos in your wardrobe will increase.
I hope this box will be cherished as a jewel beetle box that brings good luck.

• Dry lacquer

  For works of dry lacquer (kanshitsu), first a clay form is created and plaster is used to take a mold of the form. Next, repeated layers of hemp cloth and lacquer are applied to the mold until they are built up to the desired thickness. Finally, the mold is removed and additional coats of lacquer are applied to finish the piece. The hemp fibers are strengthened when the lacquer bonds with them, making dry lacquer an excellent technique for creating sturdy forms with a significant degree of freedom.

• Urushi-e

  Urushi-e (“lacquer pictures”) is a decorative technique that consists of motifs painted in colored lacquer. Urushi-e is the oldest and most fundamental decorative lacquer technique.

• Maki-e

  Maki-e (literally “sprinkled pictures”) is a representative lacquerware technique that originated in Japan around 1,200 years ago. Maki-e is done by painting lacquer motifs on the surface of a piece using a fine brush and then sprinkling gold powder onto the lacquer before it hardens, producing luxurious decorations.

• Metal sheet inlay

  Metal sheet inlay (hyōmon) is a technique that involves cutting shapes out of thin sheets of gold, silver, or other metals to create an inlay motif.

• Mother-of-pearl inlay (Raden)

  Mother-of-pearl inlay (Raden) is a decorative technique that uses the iridescent inner layer of abalone shell, turban shell, pearl oyster shell, or other mollusk shells. The technique came to Japan from China 1,300 years ago, and pieces featuring mother-of-pearl inlay are included among the artifacts at the Shōsōin Repository in Nara.