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How a Traditional Korean Inlaid Lacquer Box is Made

For those of us who are beginner or even intermediate level woodworkers, making a delicate box with a perfect finish is hard enough. Imagine that you get all of that done, and then the real work starts.

If you’ve ever been to Korea, you may have seen some of these lacquered boxes inlaid with what looks like pearl or shells:

In fact they’re shells, and while a purist might say the techniques used to get them in there aren’t proper inlay, well, watch this guy (master craftsman Lee Kwang-Woong) make one and see if you’d find it any less difficult:

“I was about to ask how much one of these boxes go for,” writes one commenter on the YouTube page, “but then I saw it takes one year to make one of them so I think I’m better off not knowing.”