The Maki-e Rat
If you hang around maki-e pen collectors long enough, you will eventually hear the debate about the quality of the antique maki-e pens compared with the art work found on the modern pens. For the most part, these collectors seem to agree that modern pens do not compete. This is not to say that modern pens are not great works of art, they are, but when set side by side you can notice a difference. Part of the problem is that modern pen makers are pressured by costs and profits, so they urge their artists to complete more pens in less time. But another problem exists, one that you would probably not be able to guess. A lack of rats. Traditionally, maki-e brushes were made from rat’s hair. Not the kind of rat you see walking along the subway rails or crawling in the Ginza gutters, but a type of Asian aquatic muskrat. For centuries, the Watanabe family raised these rats and made brushes from their hairs. The finest brushes were a single rat hair, which is 10 times finer than the average human hair. Not only was the hair super fine, but under an electron microscope you would see long grooves in the hair. These grooves helped the rat to shed water quickly after emerging from the rivers, but these grooves also proved ideal for maki-e work. These groves channeled the urushi lacquer to flow smoothly from the brush onto the artwork. Urushi is not like paint. It is much thicker and stickier, and is a pain to work in any condition. Nevertheless, a good artist wielding one of these rat brushes could make a dozen parallel lines within 1 mm of space. Try to do that with a pencil.
The sad truth of the matter is that 15 years ago the Watanabe family died out. Well, the members making the brushes are now either dead or retired, leaving no one to make new brushes. The only good news was that if the brushes were cared for, they would last a long time. But after 15 years there is now a real shortage for these Watanabe brushes. Maki-e artists often look for these brushes in antique stores and flea markets, and a single brush can command a price of hundreds of dollars. Modern brushes are made from horse hair and are not bad, but they are nothing compared to the Watanabe Rat brushes. Synthetic hair brushes are now just as fine as the rat hairs, but they do not have the same grooves and are not as easy to work. I imagine that in the future, synthetic hairs will eventually improve enough to rival or even surpass the Watanabe Rat Hair Brushes, but in the mean time, maki-e artists still have a good excuse for not surpassing the early masters.
|
 
|
