Page 141 - Sotheby's October 3 2017 Song Ceramics
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The unprecedented enthusiasm for tea drinking in the Song ritually offered to the Buddha. When Japanese monks brought the
dynasty (960-1279) brought about a tea culture that black Jian tea bowls to Japan together with the cult of tea, they
contributed to the development of various new ceramic tea wares. were adopted with enthusiasm.
White and celadon-glazed tea bowls were replaced in popularity by
black-glazed wares, whose dark surfaces provided a more dramatic The present bowl is notable for its glossy glaze and the evenness
backdrop for the white froth of the whipped tea. In Chalu [Record of the russet-coloured hare’s fur pattern, which untypically covers
of Tea], written between 1049 and 1053, the leading calligrapher most of the bowl. It is further remarkable for its steep conical shape
and tea connoisseur Cai Xiang (1012-1067) notes in the section resting on a very narrow foot, which makes this bowl more elegant
devoted to ‘Tea Bowls’ (chazhan) that if “the tea is of a pale colour, than the typical, more rustic tea bowls from the Jian kilns with
a black bowl is the best match. Bowls fired in the Jian kilns have more rounded sides and a wider foot, or of conical shape but much
a bluish black colour with stringy décor like hare’s fur (tuhao). larger. Bowls of this form are rare, as can be seen when comparing
The somewhat thicker bowl preserves the heat and cools slowly the many line drawings of temmoku bowls published in Tōbutsu
after having been warmed. These bowls are therefore very much temmoku [Import commodity ‘temmoku’], Chadō Shiryōkan, Kyoto,
in demand” (Soon-Chim Jung, ‘The Significance and Influence of 1994, passim, where a bowl of related proportions, but somewhat
the Tea Culture of the Song Dynasty’, The Monochrome Principle. larger and with the glaze retaining more black, preserved in the
Lacquerware and Ceramics of the Song and Qing Dynasties, Tokugawa family and now in the Tokugawa Art Museum, Nagoya,
Munster, 2008, p. 117). The Huizong Emperor (r. 1100-1126), one of is illustrated, pl. 11. A bowl with russet hare’s fur streaks similarly
China’s greatest imperial art lovers, agreed with Cai’s views and in predominating, but of the more classic Jian tea bowl form, in the
his treatise on tea, Daguan chalun [Discourse on tea in the Daguan Capital Museum, Beijing, is published in Zhongguo taoci quanji
reign period] written in 1107, noted that the best black bowls have [Complete series on Chinese ceramics], Shanghai, 1999-2000, vol.
the hare’s fur pattern (ibid.). 8, pl. 206.
The Japanese word temmoku (or tenmoku) designates the Chinese Lord Cunliffe was one of England’s most important collectors of
Tianmu mountains in Lin’an county, north Zhejiang province, Chinese works of art, who started in the early 1940s to collect
where Jian hare’s fur (Japanese nogime) bowls, made in the Qing dynasty jades, soon followed by ceramics, archaic bronzes
neighbouring province of Fujian, were in use for tea drinking by the and early jades. His collection included many famous treasures,
monastic communities who lived there. Consumption of tea was an including no less than three blue-and-white Chenghua ‘palace
established practice in Buddhist monasteries, as tea was prized as bowls’. A large part of his collection was sold at Sotheby’s London,
a stimulant in assisting monks in their meditation, as well as being the present bowl at Bonham’s London.
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