Hagi ware pottery, born for Matcha chawan cups

In Azuchi-Momoyama Period (1568-1600), the long provincial war in Japan was about to end. The influential daimyos and samurais had to have the social skills for building up the good hierarchical or diplomatic relationships.

What most of them could do was the tea ceremony. The tea ceremony had been completed by Sen no Rikyu (1522-1591). Above all, he emphasised to have the mind of quiet simplicity and subdued refinement. That is “Wabi” and “Sabi”.

Even after Rikyu died, many daimyos and samurais tried to realize his teaching. Hagi ware is exactly the pottery which takes a form to express wabi and sabi.

If Matcha bowls get cracked…

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Japanese gold pottery repairing, Kintsugi

Kintsugi (Kintsukuroi), filling broken pottery's cracks with goldNot only brings new life into a broken vessel but also enhances its existence value. That's Kintsugi (Kintsukuroi). In other words, the gold repairing pottery method is a Japanese sense of values expressed by their own sense of beauty and technology, with a long-cherished mind and a long love for one thing. (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || ).push({});Kintsugi began in the world of the tea ceremony during the M...

Hagi-yaki, the pottery for the tea ceremony

Origin

During the Age of Civil Wars, the high‐powered daimyos, Oda Nobunaga (1534-1582) and Toyotomi Hideyoshi (1537-1598) became the patron of Sen no Riyu.

He established the Japanese tea ceremony and pursued the idea of “wabi” and “sabi”. And Mōri Terumoto (1553-1625) also has the association with the great tea master. He had often thought to create a new pottery for tea bowls.

From 1592 to 1598, the Japanese armies invaded the Korean Peninsula by the order of Toyotomi Hideyoshi. Though the invasion fell through, the daimyos including Terumoto taken the Korean pottery from the country to Japan. Because the Korean ceramic were most popular for the tea ceremony.

The feudal lord of Hagi Domain Mōri Terumoto treated the potteries Lee Shakuko and Lee Kei (brother) with hospitality and make them create a pottery of Hagi. It was the origin of Hagi-yaki.

If you also look for Matcha powder…

The high-quality Matcha powder of Ippodo at Kyoto

Features

The texture of a Hagi ware is soft and plump. Most of the wares don’t have painting. They express the beauty with only the shapes and the colors and patterns of the clay and glaze.

The craftsmen of the Hagi ware mix three soil, Mishima (red), Daido (gray), and Mitake (white). And they mainly use the loquat color glaze or white bush clover color glaze.

The more you use it the more they change the colors. That is called as “various changes of Hagi ware”.

See other pages of Hagi-yaki