Kyo-yaki Yuteki Tenmoku Chawan with Fukurin

Name: Kyo-yaki Yuteki Tenmoku Chawan with Fukurin
Brand: Tanaka Kōsen
SKU: US-M392
Price: 148.00 USD
Availability: InStock

Tanaka Kōsen

★★★★★ (1)

$148.00

This stunning Kyo-yaki tenmoku chawan (matcha bowl) is made in the classic tenmoku shape and features a silver rim and an entrancing yuteki glaze with hints of blue. The shape is slightly wider and flatter than some classic tenmoku, and has a very pronounced finger groove below the rim along with a very conical lower section. The silver metal rim cover (ginrin - 銀輪) is a feature found on many historical tenmoku chawan which strengthens the rim and protects from chips. Yuteki (油滴 - oil-spot) is one of the most popular style of tenmoku glazes, consisting of silvery spots of iron crystals suspended on a blue or black backdrop, like oil on water.

The original tenmoku chawan were brought from Song Dynasty China to Japan along with powdered tea culture in the 13th century. Today, they are the most formal of chawan and are used in the tea ceremony on top of lacquer stands when serving tea to VIPs and nobles or when making tea offerings to shrines or the Buddha.

While most Tenmoku glazes are a simple black, occasionally the glaze recipe and the conditions in the kiln are just right, causing the ash in the glaze to separate from the iron in a way that produces beautiful metallic effects, such as the one seen on this cup, called 'yuteki', meaning 'oil-spot'.

This chawan was made by Tanaka Kōsen (田中香泉).

As one of the oldest styles of tea bowl, tenmoku (天目) are considered the most formal and revered tea bowls. Despite being known by their Japanese name, the original Tenmoku bowls came from Song Dynasty China (960–1279). When Japanese monks visited the Buddhist temples of Tian Mu Mountain (天目山 - tian mu zhan in Chinese) and learned about Chinese whisked tea culture, they brought some of their shallow, conical, black-glazed bowls back to Japan, calling them 天目 after the mountain where they encountered them. In modern Japanese, these characters are read as 'tenmoku' which is where we get the name. The original tenmoku bowls are all relatively consistent in shape and size. They have a deep, conical shape with a groove around the lip, and a small foot.

The term 'tenmoku' can be confusing, as it has referred to different aspects of these bowls over the centuries. Originally, 'tenmoku'-style bowls were referred to as chasan (茶盞), with the most esteemed of these being the kensan (建盞): bowls fired in Jianyian Kiln in Fujian. These kensan were further classified into three main glaze types:

-Nogime (禾目- hare’s fur): the most common; streaks of blue or rust red
-Yuteki (油滴 - oil-spot): small spots against a dark backdrop
-Yōhen (曜変- glittering change): large silvery spots surrounded by iridescence

The next category of chasan after kensan were the tenmoku: a term originally used to refer to bowls that were like kensan but fired in other kilns in China (or even Japan).

However, over time, the terms evolved and now tenmoku is used as the standard term for all of these conical, dark-glazed bowls, and any bowls made in this style. Confusingly, in addition to the original chawan and imitations of them, the term tenmoku can also refer solely to the shape of these bowls, or their various beautiful, metallic glazes.