"...immersed in lacquer. A German private collection of Chinese lacquerware" is an impressive display of the rich diversity and beauty of Chinese lacquer art with about 70 exhibits of outstanding quality from a period of over 1000 years. Showpieces of the exhibition are the exceptional carved lacquer works from the Song to Qing dynasties (10-19th centuries). Their repertoire of decorative motifs includes examples of the bird-and-flower genre and portrayals of figures, as well as abstract, geometric ornamentation, which all provide considerable insight into the fascinating world of imagery in Chinese lacquer art.

After the first two stages of the travelling exhibition at the Museum für Lackkunst in Münster in 2010, and the Museum für Angewandte Kunst in Frankfurt am Main in 2011, the Berlin presentation has added about a dozen new acquisitions from the collectors, and incorporates a large number of Chinese lacquer works from the collection of the Museum für Asiatische Kunst - Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. These include such masterworks as the magnificent imperial throne ensemble (3rd quarter of the 17th century) from the renowned collection of Fritz Löw-Beer, and exquisite lacquer works from the era of Qianlong (1736-1795) of the Qing dynasty, which once belonged to the collection of the Palace Museum in Beijing and were donated to Berlin as a gift from the People's Republic of China.

The collection of Barbara Piert-Borgers and Walter Borgers from Cologne has been amassed over the past 15 years with great expertise. Collector Barbara Piert-Borgers' close connection to East-Asian lacquer work goes back to the mid-1970s when she took on her first large restoration jobs as a conservator specialising in lacquer. In the early eighties she made her way to Japan to study lacquer techniques and returned "immersed in lacquer". She began to collect Chinese lacquerware together with her husband Walter Borgers in the late nineties.