18th C. Japanese Ohi Ware Mizusashi Tea Water Jar, Ex Toledo Museum

East Asia, Japan, Edo period. A lidded water jar of Ohi ware, a tall, slightly tapering cylinder with a broad strap handle arching over the mouth. It was likely made as a mizusashi, the vessel that holds fresh water during the tea ceremony. The walls are ringed with horizontal ridges and crossed by vertical spatula strokes. These deliberate marks of the hand were prized by tea connoisseurs. The handle is grooved along its length and pinched where it joins the rim, and a fitted flat lid with a round knob sits inside the mouth. The whole surface is covered in the honey-amber glaze, called ame-gusuri, that defines the ware. It pools to a deep treacle brown in the hollows and thins to golden ochre on the raised ridges. Ohi ware started in 1666, when the tea master Senso Soshitsu, son of Sen Sotan and grandson of the founding line of the Sen school of tea, was invited to Kanazawa by the Maeda lords of the Kaga domain. With him came the potter Chozaemon, who had trained in the Raku workshop in Kyoto. Chozaemon settled in the village of Ohi, took its name, and adapted Raku methods to local clay: low-temperature firing, hand-shaping, and a rich amber glaze in place of Raku's black and red. His descendants have carried on the kiln for more than three centuries. The line is still active today under the hereditary name Ohi Chozaemon, and the ware has stayed closely tied to the aesthetics of chanoyu. Item # 161777

Estimate:£454.04

View all items fromArtemis Fine ArtsorAsian Art