Budō
There is a category of chawan that steps outside the monastic restraint of classical tea aesthetics and embraces a more painterly ambition. This bowl, made in Japan around 1930, belongs to that tradition. Its surface carries a fully realised pictorial scene: a grape vine heavy with fruit, rendered in green, blue, red, and yellow over a warm brown crackle glaze. A bird rests within the composition — a motif long present in the decorative vocabulary of East Asian ceramics, where the combination of vine and bird carried associations of abundance, the passing of seasons, and the pleasures of the natural world.
The crackle glaze — kannyu in Japanese — is itself a technique with deep historical roots, developed to create controlled networks of fine fissures across the fired surface. Far from a flaw, it is an intentional aesthetic effect, one that gives this bowl a texture that changes in the light and deepens with handling. Combined with the polychrome decoration, the result is a chawan of considerable visual richness.
At 416 grams, this is the most substantial piece in the collection — a bowl with real presence in the hand, solid and composed. Sourced at auction in Tajimi, Gifu Prefecture, the historic centre of Mino ware production, it arrives with both geographic and material provenance intact.
Nearly a century old, and showing its age with complete honesty.
Details
- Type — Matcha chawan / tea ceremony bowl
- Origin — Japan (antique auction, Tajimi, Gifu Prefecture — historic Mino ware region)
- Period — Circa 1930, Taishō–early Shōwa era
- Material — Ceramic / yakimono
- Glaze & Decoration — Brown crackle glaze (kannyu) with polychrome painted grape vine and bird motif
- Signature — Not noted
- Dimensions — 12 cm × 8.2 cm (diameter × height)
- Weight — 416 g
- Condition — Good. Age-consistent wear throughout