Yoko Ichikawa creates highly original works by researching the ancient craft technique called Shippi (lacquer leather), which involves applying lacquer to leather to harden it, and adding her own new techniques. The skin that was once a container for life and the soul as a three-dimensional object is now tanned and becomes flat leather. She cuts the leather, sews it with thread, and revives it again as a container in the form of a box by coating it with lacquer. Her perspective of cherishing and utilizing the leather’s holes, scars, and other traces of when it was still a living thing gives her work a unique air. Her activity of stitching together the past and present of lacquer craft to create a new world creates a metamorphosis of materials using lacquer, a mysterious liquid, as a medium.