Lot 1

Teaism is a cult founded on the adoration of the beautiful among the sordid facts of everyday existence...It is essentially a worship of the Imperfect, as it is a tender attempt to accomplish something possible in this impossible thing we know as life. Okakura Kakuzo, The Book of Tea (1906) Christie's is pleased to present for the first time an entire collection of objects associated with the way of tea. Tea practice has become a metaphor for Japanese culture and aesthetics both in Japan and the West. The collection offered here includes the full range of objects needed for preparation of tea in a traditional tea room: painting or calligraphy to hang in the alcove, containers for powdered tea, flower vases, fresh-water jars, food vessels and sake bottles for the tea meal, and, of course, ceramic tea bowls. In a classic tea arrangement, known as toriawase, the host would often combine Japanese, Korean and Chinese objects suited to the time and place.

A Porcelain "Shoe-Shaped" (Kutsugata) Blue and White Tea Bowl (chawan)

FUJIAN PROVINCE, ZANGJHOU KILN, CHINA, MING DYNASTY (17TH CENTURY)

Details

A Porcelain "Shoe-Shaped" (Kutsugata) Blue and White Tea Bowl (chawan)
Fujian Province, Zangjhou kiln, China, Ming dynasty (17th century)
The deep bowl thinly potted with a slightly everted rim and set on a high ring foot and decorated in underglaze cobalt (gosu) with roundels of dragons, one of the roundels running over the rim of the bowl and one of them running over the edge of the foot and continuing into the center of the base
5 5/8in. (14.2cm.) diameter
With three wood boxes, the first box with paper label inscribed Gosu maruryu and the second inscribed illegibly Gosu maruryu myo...

Provenance

Segawa Masayo
Jintsu Denjiro
Mayuyama Junkichi, Tokyo

Exhibited

"Chanoyu meiwan-Aratanaru Edo no biishiki/Master Tea Bowls-The Aesthetics of the Edo Period" shown at the following venues:
The Gotoh Museum, Tokyo, 2005.5.14-6.19
Tokugawa Art Museum, Nagoya, 2005.6.25-7.24

Lot Essay

PUBLISHED:
Okochi Masatoshi, Yokokawa Tamisuke and Okuda Seiichi, Toki zuroku 11 Chaki hen (jo) (Catalogue of porcelain vol.11, tea utensils 1) (Tokyo: Yuzankaku, 1938), no. 54.

Tokugawa Art Museum and the Gotoh Museum, eds., Chanoyu meiwan-Aratanaru Edo no biishiki/Master Tea Bowls-Aesthetics of the Edo Period (Nagoya and Tokyo: Tokugawa Art Museum and Gotoh Museum, 2005), special exhibit no. 3.

This bowl was specially commissioned from the Zangjhou kilns on the southern coast of China for Japanese tea afficionados. After being thrown on a wheel, it was gently shaped by hand to create an asymmetrical shape that would appeal to Japanese taste. A similar example with a landscape design, previously owned by the daimyo of Izumo province, a tea master and famous collector of tea utensils, Matsudaira Fumai (Harusato, 1751-1818), is in the Hatakeyama Memorial Museum of Fine Art, Tokyo. See Hatakeyama Memorial Museum of Fine Art, ed., Yoshu aigan ichi (Catalogue of the Hatakeyama Soku'o Collection, vol.1) (Tokyo: Hatakeyama Memorial Museum of Fine Art, 1999), pl. 5.

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