The Yohen Temmoku Tea Bowl, the Southern Song Dynasty (1127-1279)

[Photo/artxun.com]

The Yohen Temmoku Tea Bowl is at the Seikado Bunko Museum of Art in Tokyo.

Made at Jianyang Kiln, Fujian, during the Southern Song Dynasty, the tea bowl was used in tea competitions, which aimed to select good tea. The unique color of white and blue with the black background makes it look like a starry sky, thus the Japanese called it “the universe in the bowl”. It was said that there was only two Yohen Temmoku Tea Bowls in the world. Once spread to Japan, they immediately became popular among the princes and aristocrats. Then the bowls came to the hand of Oda Nobunaga, a famous Japanese militarist and politician, but one of them was destroyed during the Incident at Honnoji in 1582 AD. The other one was preserved by Tokugawa Ieyasu, Tokugawa Iemitsu and Lady Kasuga successively. During the Meiji period, it came to the hand of the CEO of Mitsubishi, one of the four consortiums in Japan. However, he never used it even for one time, because he believed that the tea bowl is the most famous in the world and he was not good enough to use it.