About Raku-Yaki Black Raku Chawan - Rakunyū - Kyoto

A black Raku tea bowl from the Rakunyū kiln in Kyoto, formed by hand without a wheel and drawn from the kiln at full heat in the hikidashi manner. The form is the classic half-cylinder: walls that rise almost straight from the foot, a gentle swell at the belly, and a lip that leans slightly inward. One point on the rim rises a little above the rest, a small peak left by the hands.

The black is not a single coat. Glaze ground from Kamo River stone is brushed on layer over layer, and when the bowl is pulled from the fire and cools in the open air, those layers set in horizontal bands that run around the body like strata. Where the glaze lies thick it has a deep, wet-looking gloss; where it thins toward the foot it dries to a bronze-brown with a faint metallic sheen and a rougher, stony grain. Under the rim the surface pits and dimples slightly where the glaze boiled in the kiln. Held to the light, the bowl reads as black, brown, and a dull iron-grey by turns.

Inside, the walls drop to a tea pool at the base where the whisk works, and the dark interior makes the green of the matcha read brighter against it. Raku ware is porous and lighter than it looks; the bowl warms slowly in the hands and holds the tea at temperature through a sitting. Black Raku is the bowl Chōjirō first made for Rikyū, and it remains the form most closely tied to koicha.

About the Rakunyū Kiln

The Rakunyū kiln (楽入窯) is a highly respected and established Raku ware kiln in Kyoto, the city where Raku was born. The Yoshimura family has worked with fire in Kyoto since the mid-Meiji era, first as makers of whetstones and crucibles at Higashiyama Matsubara, then, from the postwar years, as makers of Raku tea bowls. The kiln now stands in the city's Minami ward and is in its third generation.

Its standing in the tea world rests on long relationships rather than marketing. The kiln has ties to the Horiuchi family of the Omotesenke school of tea that go back a generation, and its bowls are carried by tea-utensil dealers in Kyoto and Tokyo and by established tea houses in the Kansai region. The kiln's work has been shown in Paris in the Kyō-yaki Kiyomizu-yaki exhibition and at Daimaru and Mitsukoshi. In 2001 the kiln's master became the first potter working in Raku technique to receive Japan's national Traditional Craftsperson certification, and in 2011 the City of Kyoto named him one of its Masters of the Future. He lectures at the Okinawa Prefectural University of Arts. Beyond the tea room, the kiln's Raku glazes have been commissioned as interior tile for a luxury hotel.

Two things define the kiln's method. Forms are pinched up by hand and left with the slight unevenness the hands leave behind. Firing follows hikidashi, the old Raku practice of drawing the bowl from the kiln at full heat so the glaze sets in the open air. The black Raku glaze is ground from stone taken from the Kamo River.

This bowl carries the Rakunyū seal, the kiln's collaborative line: bowls made in the workshop by the master and the artisans he trains, under his direction and to the kiln's standard. Rakunyū is an independent Kyoto kiln, not a branch of the Raku family.

Details & Specifications

• Origin: Kyoto, Japan
• Kiln: Rakunyū kiln (楽入窯)
• Ware: Raku-yaki (Kyoto Raku ware)
• Form / Type: Chawan, half-cylinder form
• Finish: Kuro Raku, layered Kamogawa-stone glaze, hikidashi-fired
• Material: Hand-formed earthenware, low-fired