his later pieces that he would use, at times, a very simple and nearly colorless style of decoration, while continuing to use the traditional designs such as flowers and reeds. Beginning in 1869, Zeshin was commissioned to work for the Imperial government, and created many works of art for them which are no longer extant. These included a set of gold-lacquered chairs for the Imperial Palace decorated in a sakura (cherry blossom) motif. He was later made Japan's official representative to several international expositions, including Vienna in 1873, Philadelphia the following year, and Paris, although he did not personally attend any of these. One year before his death in 1891, Zeshin was granted the immense honor of membership in the newly created Imperial Art Committee and is uptoday the only one artist who has been recognized in 2 fields (painting and maki-e) of work. The honor of Imperial Commissioned Artists was only granted to 53 artists between 1890 and 1944. Today, one of the greatest collections of Zeshin's works is the Khalili Collections of London, containing over 100 works by the artist. Style Zeshin experimented with the technical aspects of lacquer. He mixed his lacquers with a variety of substances to achieve different colors and textures, and to control the consistency and flexibility. He invented a method of painting with lacquer sap directly on paper sized with dōsa (a solution of alum and animal glue), to prevent flaking when his urushi-e scroll paintings were rolled up. He used bronze in his lacquer to simulate the appearance and texture of iron, and cereal starch to thicken his lacquer to simulate, at least in some respects, the effect of Western oil painting. Zeshin remains, in fact, the only artist to be successful in the medium of urushi-e, as it requires specially treated paper, and a very particular consistency of lacquer to be used as paint. Zeshin also revived a complex lacquer technique called seikai-ha to produce wave forms by drawing a comb through the rapidly solidifying lacquer; this technique is so difficult it had not been used for over a century. However, although he used many revolutionary elements in his work, both technically and creatively, Zeshin's works were always, on the whole, very traditional. In the brand-new medium of lacquer painting, he would paint traditional subjects like birds and flowers, insects, waterfalls and dragons. He copied a famous painting of a tiger