51�Թ�

To make the cement waterproof and protect it from being eaten by rodents and other pests, it might be coated with Japanese lacquer.

After World War I, she would go on to create some of Modernism’s most iconic forms, including the puffy, tubular 1920s Bibendum chair, but in 1907, when she was 28 and had recently moved to France, she fixated on Japanese lacquer.

The French fine jewelry house Chaumet’s connection to Japan began in 1793 when its founder, Marie-Étienne Nitot, helped save the Japanese lacquer box collection of his former patron, Queen Marie Antoinette, two months after she went to the gallows.

Also in the family is Toxicodendron vernicifluum, or the Japanese lacquer tree.

They were black and shiny as Japanese lacquer, with a shock of red on the sole.