Tea bowl named Kengyō-utsushi

Raku Chōnyū 楽長入

Asia, Japan, Kyoto

Chōnyū was the seventh-generation head of the Raku house, a family lineage of potters in Kyoto that specialized in tea ceramics that can be traced back to a semi-mythical founder, Chōjirō 長次郎 (1516?–1592). The Raku house remains active today led by the fifteenth-generation head, Kichizaemon (b. 1949). Chōnyū was a prolific and successful potter in his day. He was instrumental in cementing the Raku workshop’s enduring success by, in part, making tea bowls that emphasized links back to Chōjirō. In 1738, Chōnyū was responsible for the 150th memorial observances of family founder Chōjirō's death. For this observance, he made 100 copies of Chōjirō's most famous teabowls, and this red Raku piece is said to be one of them. Chōnyū signed the box and it has his preferred box cords (with box inscriptions by Joshinsai, the seventh-generation head of the important Omotesenke tea school). The present bowl claims, by its name Kengyō-utsushi (“Copy of Kengyō”), to reproduce a famed (though now lost) bowl by Chōjirō named after Yatsuhashi Kengyō (八橋 検校; 1614–1685) a blind court musician and composer. The act of “copying” was a consummate act of asserting lineal links and cultural authority through the creation of homage bowls. The original Kengyō bowl was among the most famous seven bowls by Chōjirō that were passed down through the Edo Period.

This is a characteristic Raku tea bowl; hand built without being thrown using a wheel; carved to achieve an irregular but balanced form; glazed in red (one of the two typical Raku colors, along with black); and fired at a low temperature in a small kiln.