Mayumi ONAGI

 

Mayumi ONAGI 小梛真弓, born in 1979 in Tokyo, is currently based in Chiba, Japan.

 

Onagi graduated from Tama Art University in 2001 with a degree in Architecture and Environmental Design. After that, she worked as a garden designer at Japan Landscape Consultants under the leadership of Shunmyo Masuno.

 

After exploring various art, design, and architectural disciplines, Onagi decided to focus on creating objects using her own hands. As a child, she had encountered the

traditional Japanese lacquer-making technique in her father's hometown of Ishikawa Prefecture, and later as an adult, she became deeply interested in it. Before becoming an independent artist, she apprenticed under Nagatoshi Ohnishi, an honorary Professor at Tokyo University of the Arts, to learn the Urushi lacquer techniques.

 

Onagi's accomplishments include winning the Grand Prize at the Japan Crafts Exhibition in 2006 (Japan Craft Design Association), the Excellent Award at the Japan Jewelry Art Competition in 2008 (Japan Jewelry Designers Association), the Grand Prize at the Ishikawa International Urushi Exhibition in 2017 (Ishikawa Design Center), and being a finalist for the LOEWE Craft Prize in 2022 (Spain). Her works have been extensively exhibited in Japan, as well as in Asia and Europe. In January 2024, she was featured in the book “100 Lacquer Artists: The Elite of Modern Japan."