The Art of Urushi Seminar
Dutch Pen Show 2026
Washington DC Supershow 2026
Seminar Sessions:
Dutch Pen Show (Sign up on the Dutch Pen Show website)
Saturday, 6th June 2026
10:30 am -12:30 pm Art of Urushi Seminar
14:30 pm - 17:30 pm Maki-e Workshop
Washington DC Fountain Pen Supershow (Sign up on our Kyuseido Website)
Friday, 7th August 2026
11:00 am -13:00 pm The Art of Urushi Seminar
Saturday, 8th August 2026
9:00 am - 11:00 am Maki-e Workshop
About the speaker:
Sophia is a urushi and maki-e artist based in Hong Kong. She began to practice the art of urushi in 2022 on a self guided basis before taking formal maki-e lessons at Maki-e School Ginza under Matsuda Shokan in Tokyo in 2024.
About the seminar:
With over 7000-8000 years of history, the world of urushi is invariably deep and complex, and has been developed into an important traditional craft that is still used today. Urushi has been applied to fountain pens for 100 years and its popularity is continuing to grow. Much of the information regarding urushi is still difficult to obtain outside of Japan and yet internationally there has been more people interested in learning about this craft.
If you would like to learn more about the history and techniques involved in urushi work, we welcome you to join us in this seminar where we discuss what it means to work with urushi in current times.
Please join us as we cover the following topics:
What is urushi and it’s artistic & cultural significance
Basic understanding of the primary urushi styles and their history
How to distinguish good quality urushi work
The value of protecting the urushi artform