Tea Bowl Tuesday

Yasushi Fujihira’s Silver Tea Bowl contains a very different kind of aesthetic to that of his fathers.

The high grog content of the clay catches the glaze quite nicely, creating differences in the surface, adding a sense of wear.

The piece was handbuilt and the form was further smoothed out with sandpaper to create the perfect shape.

A surprise is that this tea bowl has a red clay body! You can see that it peeks out through the silver surface and creates a nice accent of color. 

With a silver palladium glazing, Fujihira’s tea bowl adds a more contemporary approach to the ceramics. 

Jian wares were exported to Japan by buddhist monks visiting Chinese monasteries. Many of these monasteries were by Mount Tianmu, which in Japanese, was read to be Tenmoku.

Tenmoku glazes are characterized by the multitudes of spots and colors in the glaze. “Hare’s Fur” is a common glaze and is achieved by manipulating the amount of iron oxide in the glaze.

During the firing, the iron segregates itself from the glaze and makes patterns. 

Such patterns include oil spotting, stripes, or hare’s fur. 

These colors and unpredictability of the glaze were admired by Buddhism practitioners as they looked for the imperfect in life and as these tea wares traveled to the West during the late 19th century.

This is a signature sekisoh tea bowl from Yukiya Izumita. With multiple layers, this piece exhibits an attitude of complexity and lightness simultaneously through the intricate collapsing and folding of the layers. Izumita's surface consideration of the piece with the use of bronze glaze spray, elevates the atmosphere of the piece to one of seemingly archaic qualities, as if the tea bowl was dug up from the earth. 

This tea bowl seems to be two pieces in one. 

Depending on how you turn the piece and how you display it, you show a different glaze technique.

Side #1 of the tea bowl features a bright flash of white with oatmeal like splatters of color.

The base of the tea bowl teases a white stoneware clay body, showing the viewer that this piece contains a lot of history from kiln firing. 

Sid #2 of the tea bowl features a condensed glaze drip that moves from the lip of the piece to the base, collecting in a large bronze and flux filled glaze drop. 

The glaze around this drip contains a metallic sheen, an orange like texture that adds to the overall quality of the piece by catching light. 

Throughout the piece there are splashes of white glaze, a mixture of kiln ash and flux agent from the glaze.

Made from pitted, sandy clay, this tea bowl has an uneven rim that contrasts with the round contours of its overall form. Otsuka coated the bowl with an array of glazes to create a series of shifting colors and textures.

The light-brown, yellow, and green pigments of the bowl stand out in bright natural light, and take on new hues as the sun shifts. 

Working on a potter’s wheel, Tsujimura’s delicate handwork left a rippling texture on the interior of this tea bowl’s tall walls. The thick layer of semi-translucent white slip, a type of glaze made from clay mixed with water, is typical of aka-shino, or “red shino”-style tea wares. Beneath this layer of glaze, a dark, ethereal figure seems to glide across the surface as if obscured behind a curtain of fog or mist.

Yui Tsujimura’s Kofuki Tea Bowl has a beautiful matte opaque white glaze coated over a stoneware clay body

There are slight shimmers in the glaze that reflect nicely on the surface of the piece, adding dimensions into the work.

On one side of the tea bowl, there is Yui Tsujimura’s signature natural ash glaze drip

On top of a darker base glaze, this glaze is a deeper color - more of an emerald or jade color.

Shiro Tsujimura's Katamigawari Tea Bowl is a beautifully thrown piece with a red stoneware clay body base. The tea bowl is coated in a high flux, opaque, white glaze. The coat of glaze is uneven, revelaing the high grog content of the clay and creates a texture that gives the glaze areas to pool and thicken. 

With the glazing method, Shiro therefore creates a piece with multiple compositions. 

This tea bowl by Shiro Tsujimura is an example of a traditional black tea bowl. This piece has a stoneware base clay body and the artist included his signature with black slip at the base of the bowl. The matte black glaze of the cup accentuates the overall form, grooves, and areas of artist manipulation. A unique piece, the cup has a kintusgi, gold lacquer, repair at the lip. The gold lacquer catches the light and elevates the piece through adding a story of its history. 

The conical form and prominent foot of Tsujimura’s tea bowl is typical of Ido style bowls, one of Japanese tea culture’s most traditional forms. Tsujimura’s white, semi-translucent glaze gives the underlying clay a warm, reddish-brown hue. As the bowl cooled, the glaze contracted to form crazed patterns across the walls. Around the bowl, a naturally occurring line of white crazed glaze undulates like a frothy wave. 

The redness of the clay body collaborates with the milky white opaque shino glaze, to create a luxurious foamy surface that is semi-matte and silky to the touch.

Tsujimura coated this tea bowl with a thick layer of white slip, a glaze made from clay mixed with water. When fired, this glaze pooled around the hip of the bowl, contrasting the smooth texture of the glazed walls and the rough, exposed clay of the base. As the piece cooled, the glaze cracked, leaving a pattern of random line reminiscent of shattering ice. Barely discernible through the glaze, a graceful underdrawing evokes the image of a bird taking flight.

Shiro uses a similar opaque milky white glaze in this piece, on top of a white stoneware. The use of black oxide as an addition to this work underneath the glazing, seeps through the opaque white glaze and creates a nice collaborative feel, almost a look into Shiro's calligraphy work.

This cylindrical tea bowl is coated with a thick layer of white slip, a glaze made from clay mixed with water, typical of Shino-style ceramics. When firing this piece, Tsujimura added a natural wood-ash glaze, which naturally landed on the vessel giving it a green hue. As the piece cooled, natural crackling in the glaze formed irregular, angular patterns across the surfaces of the bowl.

This tea bowl exhibits Yui Tsujimura’s signature glaze

A bright crystal like blue-green, this Natural Ash Glaze is phenomenal and an example of intelligent glazing techniques.

With a solid white stoneware base, the natural ash glaze is bright and glistens on the surface. 

The high silica (glass) contents of the glaze adheres to the clay body while adding the quality of water, Yui Tsujimura’s surfaces always seem like they are wet to the touch