The Lacquer Company

The Lacquer Company
London, UK — handcrafted in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

James Lowther founded The Lacquer Company in 2008, following a career with Colefax and Fowler in London and later in events and interior design in New York. The starting point was a trip to Burma in 1999 and an encounter with traditional lacquerware that never quite left him. What began as importing pieces from Saigon as a sideline became something more deliberate: a design studio building contemporary Western pieces using one of Asia's oldest craft techniques. 

Every piece is handcrafted in Ho Chi Minh City using the Son Mai lacquer technique — a process that has been produced in Vietnam for centuries and is considered among the world's finest. Once applied, the lacquer is wet-sanded in fresh water — a process repeated as many as fifteen times before colour or decoration is added. The result is a surface with a depth and luminosity that no machine process replicates.

TLC is the only lacquerware brand we carry, and we carry it exclusively in the UAE. We chose it because it sits at the precise intersection we look for: a craft with genuine historical roots, interpreted with enough restraint to work in a contemporary home. These are pieces that improve with age and handling — the opposite of everything disposable.

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