Afternoon Tea

I have a small collection of Chadogu, the tools used in Tea Ceremony, and I thought I would take some nice, artsy pictures of them. It's no fun if they just collect dust in a corner.

This is a Kyo-yaki hanzutsu chawan. Hanzutsu chawan are tea bowls with a somewhat tall, cylindrical design. This design keeps the heat from escaping, and is a design that is used throughout most of the year save in summer. Kyo-yaki is the ceramic style of Kyoto, and is a glazed style that is typically covered in intricate designs. Kyo-yaki is often extremely pretty, especially work that comes from the Kiyomizu area, but it's often a little too pretty for me. I like simpler chawan that have a wabi-sabi feel to them. But I liked this chawan.

It's a shame you can only barely see the delicate design on the kaishi, the tissue for the sweet. It has a design of turning maple leaves that I thought would work really well with this bowl... but the imagery escaped my camera...