Lacquerware · 漆器
Bamboo, lacquer, time
Time, woven into the everyday.
The time within a lacquer basket is more than its days in the workshop. It lives in decades of practiced judgment: how bamboo turns, how lacquer is allowed to cure, how gold leaf catches the light. Five crafts and thirty-three steps carry a place’s memory into an everyday object.
Give it a place in your life. Use it slowly and care for it well. A letter or a piece of jewelry kept inside may one day help the next generation know you.
One piece of each — Ping An, Xie Lan, Chun Sheng and Yue Niang — is currently available from stock. Huai Zhu is made to order in approximately three months, plus transit. See each product page for availability, color, measurements and dispatch arrangements.
Ten artisans. Three months. A lifetime in every hand.
Each XIANSU lacquer basket takes at least ten artisans working across three months to complete. The makers have, on average, more than forty years of experience. Their different skills meet in one object: splitting bamboo into fine strips, weaving the body, preparing and reinforcing the surface, then repeated lacquering, drying, sanding, painting and gilded detail.
One elder began working in lacquer-basket making at eight. More than sixty years later, he still returns to the blade each day, splitting bamboo into threads. The delicacy of those strips is the result of a lifetime of judgement: where to place the knife, how much pressure to give, when the bamboo is ready to bend.
A finished basket holds the work of many hands and the intervals between them. It carries both the months needed to make it and the decades needed to learn how.
Objects that have travelled through time
1609 → Today
Dated 1609, the Cleveland Museum of Art’s Wickerwork Box is 417 years old in 2026. Its bamboo weaving, lacquer, mother-of-pearl and gold remain visible in the museum’s photographs. It is a historical reference for today’s Yongchun lacquer baskets retaining their color for at least three hundred years. XIANSU baskets use natural lacquer and 24K pure gold leaf, made to keep their color for at least three hundred years and to be passed down through a family.
Closer to Yongchun, a county-government account records a 2023 exhibition of fifty baskets, mainly from the Qing and Republican periods. A Republican-period flat basket bearing Guo Zhensheng’s name and a gilded night-reading scene was also shown at the National Museum of China. Surviving objects give the local tradition a tangible history.
Caring for a long life
More than five centuries describes the Yongchun craft’s history since the Zhengde era (1506–1522). Long-term preservation still depends on environment and care: avoid sustained sunlight, heat, standing water and sharp changes in temperature or humidity; dust gently as appropriate. Natural lacquer and 24K pure gold leaf are at the heart of XIANSU’s commitment to color lasting at least three hundred years and to family inheritance.
What makes a work worth keeping
A work’s collecting significance rests in its maker, craft lineage, execution and documented provenance—and in the years it shares with a household. Keep its records and certificate, and care for it so the next custodian can understand its story.
Future market value depends on recognition, scarcity, condition, provenance and demand. It may rise or fall; XIANSU does not guarantee resale value or investment returns.
Lacquer across the centuries
The history of Chinese lacquerware reaches far beyond the surviving Yongchun baskets. Lacquer objects from the tomb of Marquis Yi of Zeng date to the early Warring States period. The Han-dynasty tombs at Mawangdui preserve another remarkable body of lacquerware, from more than two millennia ago.
These archaeological objects speak to the material’s long history under particular burial and conservation conditions. The same respect for lasting materials informs XIANSU’s baskets, made with natural lacquer and 24K pure gold leaf. A living lacquer surface asks for thoughtful care: gentle handling, stable conditions and protection from prolonged sunlight.
Hubei Provincial Museum · Lacquerware from Marquis Yi’s tomb ↗
Hunan Museum · The lacquer tradition at Mawangdui ↗
