TeaChat

ronin ceramurai wrote:Thanks Chip!

Historically, Oribe is named after Furuta Oribe who was a samurai under Toyotomi Hideyoshi and Oda Nobunaga both powerful Osaka warlords. Oribe studied Sadou under Sen no Rikyu before branching out to start his own school of tea and it is said that he then commisioned Mino potters to create a new type of ware for him thus the birth of Oribe ware. Asked to plot against the Emporer by his warlords in Osaka, his revolt failed and he, as well as all of his sons were beheaded.

Another intersting factoid surrounding Oribe is that of the Mino potter Kato Tokuro who passed away in the mid-80's. This story was related to me by Kato Takahiro, Tokuro's grandson whom I visited a few years ago at his family's studio. Tokuro, along with Arakawa Toyozo (Shino), Miwa Jyusetsu (Hagi), Kaneshige Michio (Bizen) and Kitakawa Handeshi (a banker from Tsu who made the most amazing pots and was the intellectual/spiritual leader of the group...... more on Handeshi later) were a group of amazingly talented potters doing work to revive and understand works from the Momoyama period which is considered to be the pinncale of Japanese studio pottery. All of these men had their respective specialities and Tokuro's was Oribe. Carrying an ego uncommon in his day, Tokuro thought that his work rivaled anything ever done historically so he proceeded to break up a series of his pieces and then bury them. As most of these potters were scholars as well as archeologists concerning their respective specialties, digging shards for study was quite common. After a number of years passed, Tokuro partially dug up his latest "find" of Oribe ware and then promptly notified Monbusho (Japanese cultural ministry) in Tokyo of the location of the specimens at which time Monbusho sent their Oribe expert down to Nagoya to join Tokuro in his "research". Retuning to Tokyo, the gentleman from Monbusho promptly wrote a lengthly treatise on the newest, and most amazing find of Oribe shards. These matters are not taken lightly in Japan however and when Tokuro let everyone in on the joke, the gentleman in Toyko was promptly fired in disgrace while Tokuro was summarily excommunicated from the prestigeous Japan National Potters Association as well as forced to move his kiln and studio.

More on the posted Oribe chawan later.....

R

Kato ei 2a.jpg

Kato Takahiro copy.jpg