About Olinalá Lacquer
Olinalá boxes are cut from aromatic linaloe wood and coated with a paste of aje insect grease, chia oil, dolomite and mineral earths. Two lacquer layers go down in contrasting colors, and the top one is scratched away with a turkey quill tipped with a thorn — the rayado technique.
What emerges is drawing by removal. Ochre rabbits, deer, birds and dense flower fields appear as line lifted out of a black ground, never as dark ink laid onto a light page. This system keeps that inversion: black is the material, and every mark is a cut through it.
- Origin
- Olinalá, Sierra Madre del Sur, Guerrero, Mexico
- Era
- pre-Hispanic lacquer tradition, continuous through the colonial period to the present workshops
- Key figures
- the hereditary lacquer families of Olinalá
- Movements
- Mexican laca / maque · Guerrero handicrafts · colonial mission trade in lacquered chests
Olinalá Lacquer design spec
Colors
Typography
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