The lacquerwork that stays in the family
The pieces start as turned wooden forms, bowls, boxes, decorative objects, made on a foot-powered lathe in a small workshop behind the house.
The pieces start as turned wooden forms, bowls, boxes, decorative objects, made on a foot-powered lathe in a small workshop behind the house.
Then they go to Aishath.
She has been doing this work since she was nine years old, watching her mother apply the coloured lacquer in thin concentric bands while the wood spun on a stick. She did not learn from instructions. She learned from proximity.
My mother never explained it, she says. I watched until I understood.
The lacquer is applied while the wood rotates, pressed on with a strip of dried leaf. The colours are built in layers, each one dried before the next. The final piece is burnished with a smooth stone until it shines.
Liyelaa jahdhu objects were traditionally made as gifts, for weddings, for births, for the houses of important people. The tradition nearly died in the 1980s when cheap imported goods arrived. A handful of families kept making them anyway.
Aishath has a daughter who is eight. She sits in the corner of the workshop, watching.