Ever Stand Lacquerware

Ever Stand operates from the Wet Kyi Inn quarter, between Old Bagan and Nyaung Oo, an area the workshop describes as sitting within Myanmar's historic lacquerware heartland, where the craft is documented back to the Bagan period of the eleventh to thirteenth centuries. The business presents itself as a family workshop, with techniques handed down from father to son across generations rather than taught through an outside apprenticeship system.

Production follows the traditional Bagan method: a base is built from woven bamboo strips, then built up in repeated layers of lacquer resin mixed with clay, wood sawdust and ash to give the surface strength and shape. Designs are then applied by hand, either etched into the surface or painted on, before a final polish using fossil-wood ash. The resulting catalogue spans boxes, trays and plates, vases, place mats, bowls and cups, decorative objects, and pieces finished in gold or silver leaf.

The workshop has taken this output beyond Bagan's local market, exhibiting at the Maison&Objet trade fair in Paris in March 2022, a step that points to export and international wholesale activity alongside its workshop-door retail trade.