White Tenmoku Kinin Chawan

Name: White Tenmoku Kinin Chawan
Brand: Tanaka Kōsen
SKU: US-M435
Price: 72.00 USD
Availability: OutOfStock

Tanaka Kōsen

$72.00

This tenmoku-gata Kyo-yaki chawan (matcha bowl) features a clean white glaze, recalling the famed Shiro Tenmoku bowl of the Muromachi period. These white tenmoku shaped chawan are also called Kinin-chawan (貴人茶碗) and are used by some tea ceremony schools for Kinin-date (貴人点) or the service of tea to nobles.

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

The term 'tenmoku' (天目) can refer to two things: the shape of a bowl, i.e. conical with a finger groove and flare at the lip; and a dark high-iron glaze that can produce various beautiful effects under the right firing conditions. Both of these originated in Jian ware from Fujian during the Song dynasty (960-1279) in China, where the dark colour of the glaze was praised for the way it contrasts nicely with the froth of whisked tea.

The original tenmoku chawan were brought from Song Dynasty China to Japan along with powdered tea culture in the 13-15th centuries. 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.

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.