RED RAKU WARE, EDO PERIOD (19TH CENTURY) BY 10TH-GENERATION RAKU MASTER TANNYU (1795-1854), IMPRESSED MARK RAKU (ENJOYMENT)

The Kyoto potter Raku Tannyu lived in a period of remarkable prosperity for the Raku family. He enjoyed the patronage of the three Sen grandmasters, and had particularly close relations with the Omotesenke grandmaster, who ran the largest and most influential tea school and was hereditary tea master to the Kii branch of the Tokugawa shogunal family in Wakayama. He traveled often to Wakayama to fire pots in the garden kiln of Tokugawa Harutomi, an opportunity that benefitted him in many ways; see Morgan Pitelka, "A Raku Wastewater Container and the Problem of Monolithic Sincerity," Impressions (the annual journal of the Japanese Art Society of America) 30 (2009), 67--72.