Page 272 - CHRISTIE'S Chinese Ceramics & Works of Art 09/14 - 15 / 17

new emphasis on purifcation and the removal of any extra tea juices, as well as
grinding, using water driven mills, to produce a particularly fne tea powder. In
preparation, some tea would be scraped of the pressed cake of tea, and would
be carefully dried in a pan and then ground and sieved to ensure the fneness
of the resulting powder. The tea bowl would be warmed with boiling water. A
small amount of tea would be put in the tea bowl with a very small amount of
boiling water and mixed into a paste. More water would then be added from
a ewer. The Shiliu tang ping (十六湯品 Sixteen grades of water) by the Tang
dynasty author Su Yi (蘇廙), notes the importance of the technique used to
pour water from the ewer onto the powdered tea. The fow of water had to be
strong, even and accurate, to the extent that the method is known in Chinese
as diancha fa (點查法) – literally ‘point tea method’. The mixture would be
whisked with a bamboo whisk to obtain a pale froth on the surface.
As tea drinking became ever more popular, and it became customary to
ofer tea to guests, tea parties were regularly held, not only for normal
social interaction, but also to embark on tea-tastings, and to demonstrate
expertise in tea preparation. The person who was able to produce the richest
froth, which lasted longest, was adjudged the most skilful. Tea bowls with
dark-coloured glazes were thus especially desirable since the pale froth of
the whipped tea was shown to best advantage against a contrasting glaze.
Black-glazed tea bowls were therefore made at a number of kilns in the
Song dynasty, including the Ding kilns of Hebei province, but the bowls most
frequently praised in historical texts were those from the Jian kilns of Fujian
province. It is perhaps not surprising that fne tea bowls should have been
made in the area of Jian’an in Fujian, since that region had a history of fne tea mark of favour, apparently using Jian ware tea bowls. One such occasion took
cultivation that predated the Song dynasty. Indeed this area had sent tea as
tribute to the court prior to the Song and continued to do so. In the mid-11th
century two oficials, Ding Wei (丁謂) and Cai Xiang (蔡襄), were responsible
for the tribute tea sent to court, and one of their innovations was making
the tea cakes themselves into works of art, moulding them with designs of
dragons and phoenixes. Instead of being strung together through holes in
their centres, as in the Tang dynasty, these tribute cakes of tea were carefully
and individually packaged before they were sent to court. To be given such a
cake of tea by the emperor was a rare honour, and it is known that the great
literati and statesman Ouyang Xiu (歐陽脩 1007-72) was granted only one
such cake of tea in all his 20 years of service to the court (see Ling Wang, Tea
and Chinese Culture, San Francisco, 2005, p. 29). One of the two oficials,
Cai Xiang, who was also a famous calligrapher, wrote a two volume treatise
on tea entitled Cha Lu (茶錄 Records of Tea), published in 1060 especially for
Emperor Renzong (r. 1023-63). The frst volume discussed the properties
of the teas themselves as well as how to store tea and how to brew tea. The
second volume discussed tea utensils. In the Cha Lu, Cai Xiang noted, that:
‘The white froth stands out best in a black tea bowl. Tea bowls made in Jian’an
are glazed black and with streaks resembling hare’s fur. Their body is slightly
thicker than normal, and retains the heat for a long time. Hence they are the
most suitable.’
Cao Tao (蔡絛), who also came from Fujian, said of his uncle Junmo君謨 (Cai
Xiang) that the latter had ten tea bowls, four having hare’s fur glazes, which
he thought produced an efect resembling butterfies’ wings, and which Cai
Xiang greatly prized (see Cao Tao’s biji (筆記), entitled Tieweishan congtan (鐵
圍山叢談), vol. 6).
There are many references to Jian ware tea bowls in the writings of Song
dynasty literati. Huang Tingjian (黃庭堅1045-1105), one of the four great
calligraphers of the Song dynasty, who was also a poet, painter and
government oficial, alludes to them in several works. These include Manting
Fan (滿庭芳), which contains the lines: yan gao jian ru, jin lü zhegu ban,
研膏濺乳
金 縷 鷓 鴣斑
‘The whisked milk-like froth [of the tea], [reveals] the golden wisps of partridge
[feather] speckles.’
While the reference to Jian wares is made even clearer in Huang Tingjian’s
Heda Mei Ziming Wang Zixiu dian Miyunlong (和 答梅子明 王 揚休 点 密 雲 龍),
which includes the lines: Jian’an ciwan zhegu ban, Gulian shui yu yue gong se,
建安瓷碗鷓 鴣斑
谷簾水與月共色
‘In the Jian’an ware bowls with partridge [feather] speckles, the water from
Gulian shares the same colours as the moon’.
Emperor Huizong also recorded a particular appreciation of black tea bowls
from Fujian in his Da Guan Cha Lun, and there are several surviving references
to the emperor personally preparing tea for selected ministers, as a special
place in the third month of the second year of the Zhenghe reign (1112) at a
special banquet in the Taiqing tower (太清樓) to honour Cai Jing (蔡京 1047-
1126 - father of Cao Tao, mentioned above). On this occasion the emperor used
the fnest tea, recently sent as tribute from Fujian, prepared it with Huishan
spring water, and served it in tea bowls with fur-like glaze [Jian ware]. Cai
Jing records two more such imperial banquets – one of these took place in the
frst year of the Xuanhe reign (1119) in the Baohe Hall (保和 殿), when again the
emperor prepared the tea himself. The third occasion recounted by Cai Jing
took place in the second year of the Xuanhe reign (1120) during a banquet in
the Yanfu Palace (延福 宮).
In 2012, a damaged Jian ware tea bowl with rare yohen glaze was discovered
near the site of the Southern Song palace at Hangzhou, Zhejiang province
(illustrated in Fukuoka City Art Museum (国宝 曜変天目茶碗と日本の美), 2015,
p. 192, fgs. 1-3). This fnd suggests that Jian ware tea bowls were also used
at the court of the Southern Song emperors, and it seems clear that some
tea bowls made at the Jian kilns were specifcally made for use by the Song
emperors. Inscriptions were applied to the base of certain Jian tea bowls
before fring. Some of these are single characters, and may refer to the maker
or the prospective owner of the bowl, some are numbers and some appear to
be geometric marks – perhaps indicating a particular workshop. Importantly,
however, archaeologists have found bowls which had the characters jin zhan
(進盏) ‘bowl for presentation [to the emperor]’ impressed into the exterior
base within the foot ring, while others had the characters gong yu (供御) ‘for
imperial use’ incised into the exterior base. It may be signifcant that the
character zhan (盏) was used on these Jian ware tea bowls, since, as Wu has
noted, the character originally referred to small jade cups and provides an
indication of the high regard in which these ceramic vessels were held in the
Song period (Marshall P.S. Wu, ‘Black-glazed Jian Ware and Tea Drinking in
the Song Dynasty’, Orientations, vol. 29, no. 4, April 1998, p. 25). Interestingly,
the Palace Museum, Beijing, has in its collection a Jian ware bowl which bears
the inscription Da Song Mingdao (大宋明道), which refers to the Mingdao
reign (1032-1033) of the Northern Song Emperor Renzong (仁宗) (1022-1063),
(illustrated in Porcelain of the Song Dynasty (II), The Complete Collection of
Treasures of the Palace Museum – 33 – Hong Kong, 1996, p. 223, no. 205).