Deep in the forests of Kampong Thom province, a tree bleeds. Its sap — toxic, luminous, and ancient — is the raw material of one of humanity's oldest crafts. When Eric Stocker arrived in Cambodia in 1998, he found the tradition barely alive. Six families still knew the way.
Gluta Laccifera: The Cambodian Lacquer Tree
The lacquer tree of Cambodia is not the same species found in Japan or China. Gluta laccifera — sometimes called Melanorrhoea laccifera — grows wild in the forests of Kampong Thom and Preah Vihear provinces. It is a tall, slow-growing hardwood that takes fifteen years to reach maturity. Its sap, once collected and refined, produces a lacquer of extraordinary depth and durability — the same lacquer that adorned the wooden temples of Angkor before stone became the preferred medium of Khmer kings.
But by the late 1990s, decades of conflict had devastated the forests and scattered the communities that depended on them. The knowledge of lacquer harvesting — when to cut, how deep, at what hour of the night — survived only in the memories of a handful of elderly tappers in remote villages. Eric found six families who still practised the art. Six families standing between a thousand-year tradition and oblivion.
"The sap is harvested at night, when the tree's respiration changes. The tappers work by feel and by instinct — knowledge passed from father to son, never written down. When those six families are gone, no book can replace them."
A Harvest of Patience and Poison
Cambodian lacquer sap is not a gentle material. Fresh from the tree, it is highly toxic — causing severe dermatitis on contact, blistering the skin of the uninitiated. The tappers who harvest it have built immunity over years of exposure, their hands scarred and toughened by decades of work. They climb the trees at night with simple tools — a curved blade, a bamboo collection vessel — and make careful incisions in the bark. The sap flows slowly, a few hundred grams per session, darkening from translucent amber to deep brown as it meets the air.
This raw sap must then be filtered, heated, and aged before it can be used. The entire process — from tree to workable lacquer — takes weeks. There is no industrial shortcut, no synthetic substitute that achieves the same molecular cross-linking, the same luminous depth, the same extraordinary resistance to water, acid, and time.
Preserving What Nearly Vanished
Eric's work in Cambodia has always been inseparable from the preservation of this supply chain. Training artisans means nothing if the raw material disappears. Over twenty-five years, Stocker Studio has maintained relationships with the remaining harvesting families, ensuring fair prices and consistent demand for their sap. It is a fragile ecosystem — botanical, economic, and cultural — held together by the commitment to use authentic materials in an age that rewards speed and substitution.
The lacquer trees of Kampong Thom are quiet sentinels of a tradition that connects the workshops of Siem Reap to the forests of the Cambodian interior, and through them to the Angkorian artisans who first discovered that a tree's slow, poisonous tears could be transformed into something of permanent beauty.
The Carnets d'Atelier are our workshop journals — reflections on craft, material, and the slow work of making things that endure.
Continue exploring:
What happens to the sap once it reaches the workshop — Thirty Layers of Patience. And how that material returned, in 2018, to conserve the Buddhas it once decorated — The Buddhas of Prè Rup.
Step inside the atelier — Inside the Workshop. Or browse the work itself in all collections.
