I have been asked time after time why it is that Match tea bowls are so especially valuable – far more so than the equivalent shape and size of rice bowls, for example.
One of the things that’s remarkable about Japan, and noticeable to those who look closely at Japanese culture, is the huge importance placed on pottery in society, and how honoured great potters are. It’s difficult to understand this without understanding the significance of the tea ceremony, such a major tradition in Japan, and that the tea bowl plays an absolutely central role.
That is why, when a Japanese potter starts out on his traditional training, he may spend up to 10 years just making the simplest cups like Yunomi, before feeling he is allowed to make a proper matcha tea bowl. It is the most important kind of object to attempt to make, so he must be fully prepared. Only after many years, with all his skills deeply rooted, may he advance.
The tea ceremony has given the tea bowl an extraordinary place in Japanese society and in pottery, associating it not just with daily routine, but also with meditative and spiritual practice, as was originally developed by Zen ritual. This gives the teal bowl exceptional power as an object.
But it also has power as art, as the potters who make tea bowls have famously used the form for the expression of higher thoughts and important aesthetic ideas. Sometimes even on the level of great abstract paintings. The most rewarding tea bowls can delight the senses and be true works of art - in the way they use space and colour, the way the shapes might suggest other worlds, in the contrast and balance between their inner and outer spaces, in the flow of glazes and distinction of textures, and the way they fit the hand and suggest use. They are valuable objects indeed.
More than 400 years have passed since Sen no Rikyu transformed the tea ceremony from its Zen ritual origins, and still the tea bowl shines at its center - a ceremonial vessel, a practical object, a work of art - profoundly reflecting Japanese culture and aesthetics, and exuding a uniquely powerful presence both domestically and internationally. Whether you are coming from the world of ceramics, or by way of Matcha tea, I hope you find a wonderful tea bowl for yourself – one to reflect your own journey.