Noriyuki Furutani, Yuteki Tenmoku Tea Bowl (Anagama) - 油滴天目茶盌 本銀覆輪仕立 (穴窯焼成) , (C24319P)
Furutani Noriyuki’s Yuteki Tenmoku Teabowl transports us to the first stage of teabowl history. During China’s Southern Song dynasty (1127–1279), potters in northern Fujian crafted smooth, symmetrical bowls of dark clay coated with iron-infused glazes. Fired in high-temperature kilns, the results were gleaming brown and black vessels of a size, form, and surface ideally suited for the preparation and consumption of whisked powdered tea. Zen Buddhist monks who had trained at Fujian monasteries brought such teabowls back to Japan where they became known as tenmoku, referring to the name of the mountain, Tianmu, near the monasteries. Muromachi period (1392–1573) warriors and later connoisseurs coveted such teabowls for their beauty, technical virtuosity, and connection to what was perceived as an all-powerful China. Fast-forwarding to the 1950s, Japanese government officials designated eight teabowls National Treasures, five of them from the Southern Song dynasty—a definitive nod to enduring Chinese sources of Japanese cultural identity. Today, as in the past, hosts select tenmoku bowls for the most formal style of tea, stabilizing and elevating the narrow-footed vessels on lacquer stands, as in China almost a millennium earlier.
In this bowl, Furutani meticulously channels each feature of historical Chinese yuteki (“oil spot”) bowls. A reflective silver band encases an otherwise thin lip from which an iron-rich glaze has flowed downward. Throughout its surface, excess iron oxide has crystallized to produce a glimmering, dappled effect. Born to a family of potters based in the ancient kiln center of Shigaraki, Furutani chose to not work in his father Furutani Michio’s “natural and rustic” style, as he describes it, but in the imported Chinese mode, one requiring an exacting control of wheel throwing, glaze chemistry, and the painstaking elements of firing—temperature, time, and oxygen concentration. According to the artist, most important is that a teabowl conveys dignity and presence, qualities that abound in this contemporary link to classical Chinese ceramics.
Meghen Jones
Associate Professor of Art History
New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University