Two-Sided Hakeme Circle Kaiseki Placemat

This rectangular placemat tray is sized to hold a whole course at once—the bowls, the small dishes, the chopsticks—and rest on the table as one setting. The wood is shinanoki, a lightweight variety of Japanese linden.

The brushwork is left visible, a technique called hakeme. Across the middle, the lacquer is swept in a slow circle; around the borders it is drawn straight, edge to edge. Run a finger over it, and the ridges left by the brush are still there, and under low light, they catch and hold.

This placemat has two faces, both finished, both meant for the table. One is negoro: vermilion red lacquer wiped over black, the red thin enough to allow hints of the black to emerge from underneath. The other is akebono, literally “daybreak.” Black worked over red just enough to allow the red to rise through the dark like light before sunrise, revealing new shifts in character with each fresh angle.

Both faces keep developing as they live alongside you. Lacquer polishes as it ages, and the same years that draw the black forward on the one face draw the red up through the other. Which side sits upward is yours to decide, meal to meal.

One placemat, two faces. Set the meal down, and leave it to them.

Yamanaka Lacquerware

Yamanaka lacquerware, also known as Yamanaka Shikki, is a kind of lacquerware produced in the Yamanaka Onsen district of Kaga, Ishikawa Prefecture. This lacquerware is unique in that it blends wood grain's natural elegance with the elegant maki-e technique of sprinkling gold, silver, or other colored powder onto a lacquer painting.

With its beautiful wood texture, delicate and robust Yamanaka lacquerware incorporates a modern sense of design while inheriting a tradition that has lasted for 400 years.