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I thought we needed a thread for the appreciation and discussion of teabowls so I'll start it of with my beautiful Petr Novak bowl.

I really love these bowls, such a great craftmanship and they're truly delightful to drink out of because they're so beautiful.


What are your favourite bowls?

One by Petr Novak--I call this one The Flower of Forgetfulness, after the bowl at the heart of the Heinlein short story, We Also Walk Dogs....



Finding this image made me realize I still have never caught this bowl in a way to do justice to why I love it so much. Must make up for that.

Another couple of images to demonstrate why I love the Flower of Forgetfulness so much: the play of light through the moving tea liquor is enhanced by the pattern of the glaze



And the outside is dramatic in a different way

debunix wrote: ↑

Sat Mar 03, 2018 6:15 pm

Another couple of images to demonstrate why I love the Flower of Forgetfulness so much: the play of light through the moving tea liquor is enhanced by the pattern of the glaze

Awesome teabowl debunix!! Petr's work is all very good but even in that context this piece really stands out.

A cup/small bowl by Jiri Duchek. My favorite cup these days. Very subtle and simple, and nice to hold in hands.

Beautiful fine crackles!

Irabo style chawan by Korean artist Shin Jeong-hee.
I especially like the simple elegant shape as well as the modest look of this teabowl given as a present by a special tea-friend.

Elise wrote: ↑

Fri Feb 01, 2019 2:50 pm

Irabo style chawan by Korean artist Shin Jeong-hee.
I especially like the simple elegant shape as well as the modest look of this teabowl given as a present by a special tea-friend.

Beautiful, thank you for sharing Elise!

Elise wrote: ↑

Fri Feb 01, 2019 2:50 pm

Irabo style chawan by Korean artist Shin Jeong-hee.
I especially like the simple elegant shape as well as the modest look of this teabowl given as a present by a special tea-friend.

Wow. Thats a beautiful one.

Subtle beauty in the surfaces on that one--like a natural stone. It has the look of a slightly coarse surface but I bet it feels *very* nice in the hand, smoother to the touch than to the eye.

Tenmoku chawan by Noriyuki Furutani.
This teabowl is a newly arrived one, it impresses me quite a lot and I am feeling very lucky to be able to do it but am still a little bit shy when preparing matcha in it.

Oooh!

I saw some fabulous bowls like that in Japan, particularly a group of very wider and very shallow bowls at an exhibit in a Kyoto department store--gorgeous. I LOVE that glaze, but it seems to be mostly used for pieces in that shape, tiny sake cups, and quite large chawans. I'm hoping to someday find a smaller chawan or larger guinomi.....so.....envy!

Yes, the shape finds it’s origin in the first teabowls brought back from China to Japan. These bowls were glazed in a similar way and called after the name of the place the were made: Mount Tianmu in China (Tianmu is the Chinese way to pronounce the same characters for Tenmoku in Japanese: 天目 « Heaven’s eye »).
This glaze is almost always used on this kind of shape which allows the formation of the thick glaze edge on the bottom and the linear shapes going down the inside (typical with this type of glaze).
The one I have is actually a chawan.

debunix wrote: ↑

Sat Feb 02, 2019 8:16 pm

Oooh!

I saw some fabulous bowls like that in Japan, particularly a group of very wider and very shallow bowls at an exhibit in a Kyoto department store--gorgeous. I LOVE that glaze, but it seems to be mostly used for pieces in that shape, tiny sake cups, and quite large chawans. I'm hoping to someday find a smaller chawan or larger guinomi.....so.....envy!

I happen to have the same chawan as Elise (maybe from the same Gansui gallery), I like the glaze and the bowl but I seldomly use it, either for the complexity of a correct handling of it, or because I'm not finding it superior to regular Raku when making casual tea. And that bowl is in fact rather small (12.4x6.6cm). The other one from Daisuke Ishikawa I use is about that same size. Hira chawan I saw looked weird to me, traditionally they are Ido/Tenmoku-gata/shape, but I might be biased.
Tenmoku is used for other pieces, and some large ones : Koji Kamada has produced a few mizusashi for instance.