Eight-lobed covered box with petal-shaped small containers after the Shosoin Treasure 

In the craft of lacquerware, magewa is one of the techniques used for creating the base material on which the lacquer is applied. It involves slicing wood into thin sheets, bending them into hoops and then stacking the hoops to form a vessel. As a master of this technique, Akaji Yusai took part in a survey that commenced in 1953 of the lacquerware items among the Shosoin Treasures (a collection of some 9,000 artefacts stored in the Shosoin Repository, most of which are considered to date from the eighth century). This piece was one of Akaji’s attempts to recreate a set of small petal-shaped containers from the Shosoin. He made two of the containers using the magewa technique. It is thought that eight such containers were stored inside a larger box, and they were used for serving food in the way an hors d'oeuvre set is used today. The magewa technique, which was developed in China more than 2,000 years ago to create a base material that would not warp, has been passed down through the ages and continues to be used today.
(HASEGAWA Tamao)