This is where lacquer gets good: not at court, but at home. A small lobed altar dish for fruit, cakes, incense or other dry offerings, made for the everyday theatre of the household shrine rather than for a display cabinet. Lacquer is the sap of the lacquer tree, built up in thin layers over a wood core and polished hard, a process of patience as much as skill.

The flower form, the red ground and the peony-and-butterfly roundel give it ceremony; the pieced timber body keeps it practical and close to hand. The brush-written base is the last small charge in it. An object made to be used, lifted, filled and put back in place, over and over.