Workshop Notebooks
Stories, techniques, and reflections from the workshop. Five decades of lacquer, told by the hands that shaped them.
2024
Step inside our atelier in Siem Reap. Watch Eric demonstrate the ancestral techniques that define Stocker Studio — from raw lacquer preparation to the final polish. Every gesture carries fifty years of memory.
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Encounters
1974 — Nantes, France
In 1974, a young Eric Stocker began his apprenticeship under Pierre Bobot — painter, lacquer artist, and collaborator of Jean Dunand and Eileen Gray. That encounter shaped everything that followed.
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Materials
1998 — Kampong Thom, Cambodia
When Eric arrived in Cambodia, he found surviving Gluta laccifera trees in the forests of Kampong Thom. Six families still knew how to harvest the sap. A fifteen-year growth cycle, a thousand-year tradition — and nearly lost forever.
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Transmission
1998–2008 — Siem Reap
Starting with twelve apprentices at the EU's vocational program, Eric trained over 350 Cambodian artisans in lacquer, gilding, and polychrome. Many were deaf youth from the Krousar Thmey foundation. Today, over 70% of our workshop's artisans are deaf.
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Gestures
The Workshop
Each piece receives twenty to fifty coats of natural lacquer. Each coat cures for three to seven days under controlled humidity. There is no way to accelerate the process. The lacquer decides its own rhythm.
Read →2023
Community First follows the journey of lacquer from raw sap to finished masterpiece. A craft that has survived centuries, told through the hands that keep it alive.
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Encounters
1980–1998 — Paris
For a quarter century, Eric restored Chinese and Japanese lacquerwork for France's national museums. The Mobilier National, guardian of the Republic's finest decorative arts, became his school of mastery.
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Gestures
Technique
Crushed eggshell becomes mosaic. Fragments smaller than a grain of sand, placed with tweezers into wet lacquer, one by one. Thousands per piece. Patterns emerge like cracked earth, like living skin.
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Encounters
2018–2020 — Angkor
In 2018, the APSARA Authority invited Eric to train thirty conservation professionals on using traditional Cambodian lacquer to restore 12th-century Buddha statues at Prè Rup temple. Ancient techniques preserving ancient art.
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Materials
Materials
24-karat gold leaf, thinner than a whisper. The same water gilding technique used in French cathedrals and Khmer temples for a thousand years. Timing, pressure, breath — there is no second chance.
Read →"A piece of lacquerwork should be more than an object. It should carry the soul of the craft and the hands that made it."Eric Stocker
