Hiroyuki Inami

Hiroyuki Inami is a Japanese lacquer artist whose work brings together urushi with carefully chosen base materials—often wood or metal—balancing crisp structure with meticulously built surfaces. Born in 1971 in Chiba, he began his career in wood- and metal-related crafts after art school, then turned to urushi as a finishing discipline and pursued deeper training in Wajima. After studying base-making at the Wajima Urushi Art Institute, he developed a practice defined by material contrast: hardness and weight answered by lacquer’s depth and luster. From contemporary incense containers to small objects, his pieces—such as ebony forms accented with geometric raden—offer a quiet tension and a distinctly modern elegance.