Born in Osaka in 1985, Yoko Ichikawa graduated with a major in lacquer work from the Department of Crafts, Kyoto City University of Arts. After going out on her own, she worked as a "Shippi" artist in Kyoto, and has now relocated to Takashima City, Shiga Prefecture, where she continues to produce lacquer works. During her university days, she developed an interest in "Shippi" techniques, which she sublimated into a unique form of expression through research and experimentation. Shippi, which involves creating vessels from animal skins and coating them with lacquer, and letting them harden, is a craft technique with a history dating back to the Asuka period, but which almost disappeared from history at one point. Ichikawa creates her works against the backdrop of the history of Shippi, which she personally unraveled, and overlaps the act of sewing, which are the roots of her own craftsmanship, with her own sense of life and death. The works are unique in that the skin is not completely covered with lacquer, but retains its texture. The concept of her works is to reconstruct the membrane that once encased a three-dimensional life as a new entity that contains something by sewing it back together, soaking it in the sap of the lacquer tree, and letting it harden. The process of transformation of the skin itself, which can be seen through the lacquer coating, is the core of her work.