Vintage Small Hsun Ok, Burma/Myanmar

Description

Lacquer has been a traditional Burmese craft since the 13^th century, and is incredibly labor and time intensive, even for a smaller piece like this that literally takes weeks of skill and effort. Successive layers of lacquer must be smoothly applied, dried for days, and reapplied many times to make the pieces more resilient.  Favored and a significant part of Burmese culture, lacquer was the preferred gift from Burmese kings to foreign envoys and for use at court. A graceful, spiritual and inspirational lidded vessel, a hsun ok is used in Theravada Buddhism in Burma/Myanmar by devotees to carry offerings and gifts for monks to monasteries or temples to “make merit” toward Buddhist enlightenment, as doing merit-worthy deeds affects the quality of one’s next life and contributes to a path to enlightenment. Filled with rice, fruit, boiled eggs, and more, women carry them and place them on temple or monastery altars next to a Buddha image.

Given its small size, this hsun ok may have been placed on a home altar along with an image of a Buddha or as a fine decorative piece.  A spired lid with a finial representing the soaring outline of a Burmese stupa surmounts the cover, and has a delicate, beautiful profile that rises from a woven bamboo base to a rounded decorative center topped by a stupa-like double bulbous finial. Its simple yet sophisticated design is comprised of rows of parallel raised lines at the bottom, intricate triangular and beaded borders in the center. The surface designs of triangles and narrow rows holding up the stupa top all formed from a mix of lacquer sap and ash and delicately hand applied as if it were putty.