Chawan tea bow

This new style of tea bowl combines the light blue “Geppaku” (moon-white) glaze with gold-painting. Gold-painting was originally developed as a technique to paint ceramics, but this work emphasises the texture of gold by expressing it as calligraphy rather than painting and opens up a new frontier for Geppaku glazing. The gold applied to the base creates an austere expression that seems to sink into the clay, while the gold applied to the glaze emits a glow. The original primitive expression of the clay, the scarlet colour brought out by the flames, the white clay, the vivid light blue of the glaze and the gold are layered together to create an attractive tea bowl.

Clay, Tea cup

Crafted by

Hosai Matsubayashi