Burmese lacquerware is an important and ancient tradition of craftsmanship in Myanmar (formerly Burma), with the oldest known example dating back to the 13 th century. Lacquerware was often gifted to foreign envoys by members of the Burmese court. It takes on many forms, ranging from boxes, used for the storage of sacred texts and jewels to everyday items, to vessels that were used during Buddhist ceremonies. One of the most common items is the kun-it, a cylindrical box consisting of several shallow trays for holding ingredients.

The art form is called pan yun in Burmese, and is a painstakingly long and intricate process, requiring considerable skill from the artist to complete a single object. The artist constructs the object in bamboo or wood, seals it with an mixture of lacquer (called thit-si in Burmese) and sawdust, which is then left in an underground brick cellar to dry and harden for up to 10 days. It is then polished, and this process of layering and polishing repeated several times, using progressively finer coats of lacquer. In the final stages, sawdust is replaced with ash, until a final coat of pure and highest quality of lacquer is applied, revealing a deep, richly coloured, lustrous surface. Once this process is complete, the artist engraves the surface of the lacquer with a sharp iron stylus to achieve the desired pattern, and the incisions are filled with coloured pigments. It is eventually sealed with resin and the final product emerges as stunningly complex piece of delicate intricacy and precision.

Besides European interest in the Burmese lacquerware, there was significant interest in the form in neighbouring countries as well. For instance, members of the Tamil community settled in Burma in large numbers during colonial rule, many of which maintained strong relations with their homelands, particularly those whose ancestral lands were in the region of Chettinad in Tamil Nadu. Often returning for family events, they would bring back fine materials from Burma, including lacquerware of excellent quality, which has since passed down generations acquiring the name
Madras lacquer due to the lack of knowledge regarding its historical origins.