Inrō Ensemble with Dragonfly Design LACMA M.2009.169a-c

Los Angeles County Museum of Art released at least 24,000 images into the public domain. The art objects in this collection are in this category. Today LACMA is the largest art museum in the western United States, with a collection that includes nearly 130,000 objects dating from antiquity to the present, encompassing the geographic world and nearly the entire history of art.

The origin of the term maki-e is a compound word of maki meaning "sprinkling" and e meaning "picture" or "design". The term can also be used to refer to lacquerware made with this decorative technique. The term maki-e first appeared in the Heian period. This technique is the most used technique in Japanese lacquer decoration. The maki-e is often combined with other techniques such as raden (螺鈿) in which a nacreous layer of mollusk shell lining is embedded or pasted in lacquer, zōgan (象嵌) in which metal or ivory is embedded in lacquer, and chinkin (沈金) in which gold leaf or gold powder is embedded in a hollow where lacquer has been shaved. To create different colours and textures, maki-e artists use a variety of metal powders including gold, silver, copper, brass, lead, aluminum, platinum, and pewter, as well as their alloys. Bamboo tubes and soft brushes of various sizes are used for laying powders and drawing fine lines. As it requires highly skilled craftsmanship to produce a maki-e painting, young artists usually go through many years of training to develop the skills and to ultimately become maki-e masters. Kōami Dōchō (1410–1478) was the first lacquer master linked to specific works. His maki-e works used designs from various Japanese contemporary painters. Kōami and another maki-e master, Igarashi Shinsai, were originators of the two major schools of lacquer-making in the history of Japan.