A Tenmoku Tea Bowl Attributed to Itaya Hazan, 1942

Tenmoku Tea Bowl

The glaze on this bowl is a deep, glossy black, flecked all over with fine brown specks. It thins to brown at the rim and stops short of the foot, leaving the clay bare below. Inside, the black is smooth enough to reflect the studio lights.

It is a tea bowl (chawan) of the tenmoku (天目) type, rather than a tea cup. The bowl is labelled as the work of Itaya Hazan (板谷波山, 1872 to 1963) and dated 1942. We have not found a record that confirms the bowl or its date.

One possible match, also unconfirmed: a list for a 2023 Hazan exhibition at the Sen-oku Hakuko Kan includes a 天目茶碗 of about 1942 from Chikusei City, in its Kanbayashi Collection (神林コレクション). We found no image of that bowl to compare.

Hazan and Chinese Black Glazes

Tenmoku bowls go back to Jian ware (建窯), the black-glazed tea bowls of China. Tokyo National Museum notes that Hazan studied early Chinese ceramics such as Jian ware and worked on tenmoku and other glazes learned from them. The museum holds another of his tenmoku bowls, brown with spots, which is a different bowl from this one.

This is a long way from the decorated porcelain of his Meiji years, when Art Nouveau shaped his patterns. A plain black bowl like this one follows Chinese models instead. Hazan also stood apart from the Mingei movement, working as a studio porcelain artist.

In 1953 he became the first craftsman to receive the Order of Culture.

Another Hazan tea bowl, known to us only from an old photograph, is the subject of a separate post on the history of the tenmoku name.

Hazan's black glaze looks back to Chinese Jian ware and shines like lacquer. The pieces we have at our Etsy black-glaze listings are matte where his is glossy and loose in form where his is exact, chosen for daily tea rather than display.