Article: Kyoto Damascene: The Japanese Gold-Inlay Jewellery Called Zogan
Kyoto Damascene: The Japanese Gold-Inlay Jewellery Called Zogan
Every grain of gold was placed and struck by hand. There was no drawing to follow.
The black is iron. The gold is gold - pure, and set into the iron itself rather than laid on top of it. The craft is called zōgan, and in Kyoto it has been practised since the Edo period.
What makes it remarkable is the scale at which it is done. Before any gold goes on, the surface of the iron is cut with grooves - seven or eight of them in a single millimetre.
What zōgan is
A rose, drawn in gold that was never melted or poured.
Zōgan means setting one material into another. The word covers ceramics as well as metal, but the metalwork is the harder discipline, and it is the one Kyoto is known for.
In English the technique is usually called damascene - and the name is not an accident.
From Damascus to Kyoto
The craft is thought to have begun in the region around Damascus, in what is now Syria, and to have travelled the Silk Road eastward. It had reached Japan by the Asuka period - though very little was made then, which is why an Asuka piece, if one appears, commands an extraordinary price.
Most of what survives in Japan is Edo-period work, and much of it was made in Kyoto. What remains of that tradition is still called kyō-zōgan - Kyoto damascene. Edo workshops set inlay into mirrors and into fubako, the lacquered boxes used for letters.
There is a detail from that period worth knowing. Korean craftsmen came to Japan and learned inlay here. In Korea at the time, artisans held low social rank; in Japan, close by, they were held in high regard. Many never went home.
Seven or eight grooves in a millimetre
Ivy. Each leaf is separate pieces of gold, tapped into the grain one after another.
The work goes in seven stages.
- Nunome-kiri - cutting the grain. Fine grooves are cut across the iron, lengthwise and crosswise, with a chisel made for the purpose. Seven to eight grooves per millimetre. Cut them too shallow and the gold will lift off later; this stage alone takes years to learn. (Ceramic inlay skips it - the clay is soft enough to press into.)
- Irezan - setting. Pieces of pure gold or silver, 0.15 to 1 millimetre across, are laid on the grain and tapped in with a small hammer to draw the pattern. There is no underdrawing. The design comes out of the maker's hand as the work proceeds, which is why no two pieces are the same.
- Settling. The inlay is struck again with two hammers - one of deer antler, one of iron. The antler does not stretch the gold and brings up its lustre; the iron drives it home.
- Rusting, and stopping the rust. The surface is corroded with iron oxide, brushed with ammonia water and left about two days in a muro, a damp chamber, until rust rises and buries the cut grain. Tannin then stops the rust where it is.
- Urushi-yaki - lacquer firing. The piece goes on a mesh over heat and is brushed with lacquer three or four times, firing between coats. This is what turns the iron black.
- Togidashi - bringing it back. A spatula, wetted, is worked over the blackened surface to polish the gold and silver back out of it. This is where the shine comes from.
- Finishing engraving. Lines and grooves are cut into the gold itself, and fine sand is dropped onto chosen areas to take the gloss off them. The last adjustments are made here.
Why it does not fade
Inlaid work keeps its colour. Gold does not tarnish, and the lacquered iron beneath it is sealed. Edo-period pieces made three hundred years ago can still be used today - which is the practical reason, beyond the labour, that good zōgan holds its value.
Machines took over most of Japanese manufacturing during the Shōwa era, and the share held by handwork shrank to very little. Inlay was not spared. A small number of artisans carried the technique through, and what they make now is valued accordingly.
See the work
Five pieces, all Kyoto damascene, all by Yamamoto Bijutsu of Kyoto.
