Lacquer

Hanoia has hand-made Vietnamese lacquerware since 1997, working from a traditional lacquer village near Hanoi where the craft has been passed down through generations along the Red River delta.

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Lacquer here is not painted on. It is built layer by layer over months, each coat sanded back before the next goes on - a slow accumulation rather than a single application. Some lines take their form directly from the landscape: the Vinh vase's curve follows the rise and fall of the limestone karsts at Ha Long Bay, the fine lines across its surface left by sanding rather than carving, each pass revealing a little more of the colour underneath.

The collection spans boxes, trays, vases, lamps and photo frames, in finishes with names of their own - Innate, Mindfulness, Nest, Moonbow, Terrace - each a different colourway and surface treatment of the same patient technique. Nothing here is fast to make, and nothing here looks it.

Read our guide to understanding Vietnamese lacquerware.

MAKER SPOTLIGHT

Fratelli Bonvini

Fratelli Bonvini has been a stationery shop and printworks on Via Tagliamento in Milan since 1909, kept just as it was by the typographers who took it over in 2014. Its archive of type, ornament and printing blocks now supplies notebooks, greeting cards and pencils, with covers by Milan illustrators and by Cabaret Typographie, the letterpress collective in residence at the shop. Exclusive to Australia.

Cabaret Typographie prints

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