{"product_id":"ohi-chozaemon-ix-chawan-ame-glaze-hanashobu-iris-tea-bowl-kanazawa-ohi-ware-urasenke-hand-built-matcha-chawan-with-tomobako","title":"Ohi Chozaemon IX Chawan Ame Glaze Hanashobu Iris Tea Bowl Kanazawa Ohi Ware Urasenke Hand-Built Matcha Chawan with Tomobako","description":"A hand-built matcha tea bowl by Ohi Chozaemon IX (1927-1986), ninth-generation head of the Ohi family of Kanazawa. Amber ame glaze pools across the body in translucent strata, and an abstracted hanashobu (Japanese iris) is incised beneath the surface, half-dissolved in light. Signed tomobako included.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e🔹 [ BASIC DETAILS ]\u003cbr\u003e• Artist: Ohi Chozaemon IX\u003cbr\u003e• Origin: Kanazawa, Japan\u003cbr\u003e• Material: Ohi ware with amber (ame) glaze\u003cbr\u003e• Motif: Japanese Iris (Hanashobu)\u003cbr\u003e• Era: 1970s\u003cbr\u003e• Box: Tomobako (artist's wooden presentation box)\u003cbr\u003e• Condition: Good, carefully inspected\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e🔹 [ Cultural \u0026amp; Artistic Insight ]\u003cbr\u003e[ THE OBJECT ]\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe form is built entirely by hand. No wheel. The walls carry the slow memory of the potter's palms, and the rim rises and falls in a quiet, uneven line. The foot is low, carved with restraint. The body holds the weight of a bowl made to be lifted in both hands.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe ame glaze — the signature amber of Ohi ware — is laid thickly, and where it runs it catches the light like aged honey held against a winter window. In the deeper zones the color turns to dark rust and burnt caramel; where it thins, flecks of the clay beneath show through like embers. Inside the bowl, the glaze pools into a still, reflective plane, waiting for the green of matcha to rise against it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe hanashobu — Japanese iris — is not painted. It is drawn into the clay itself, incised with a few confident strokes before firing, then buried beneath the amber glaze. You see it the way you see a flower through shoji paper: present, but held back. The petals open toward one face of the bowl, the leaves sweep around the body, and the whole composition turns quietly as the bowl is rotated in the hand.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e[ CULTURAL \u0026amp; ARTISTIC INSIGHT ]\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOhi ware (Ohi-yaki) begins in 1666. In that year, the fifth lord of the Kaga domain, Maeda Tsunanori, invited the Urasenke tea master Senso Soshitsu IV to Kanazawa to establish the way of tea in the castle town. Senso did not travel alone. He brought with him a potter named Chozaemon, a disciple of the Raku family of Kyoto, to make the chawan that the new tea culture of Kaga would require. Chozaemon settled in the village of Ohi, just outside Kanazawa, discovered a fine local clay, and built a kiln. From that moment, the Ohi line began — and it has continued, father to son, in the same city, for over three hundred and fifty years.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eFrom the very beginning, Ohi ware was bound to Urasenke tea. The bowls were hand-built in the Raku manner — pinched and carved, never thrown on the wheel — but instead of the black and red of Kyoto Raku, Ohi developed its own signature: ame-gusuri, the amber glaze. The name means simply \"candy glaze,\" and it captures a color that is neither brown nor gold nor red, but something closer to the light held inside aged amber, or the last hour of an autumn afternoon. This amber became the visual language of Kaga tea — warm enough for the long Hokuriku winters, quiet enough for the Urasenke spirit of restraint.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe ninth-generation head, Ohi Chozaemon IX (1927-1986), inherited the name in 1966 and led the kiln through the postwar decades, when Japanese tea culture was re-examining itself and searching for continuity. He was known for bowls of deep, unhurried presence — forms that kept the hand-built softness of the Ohi tradition while carrying a more contemporary awareness of negative space and drawing. His incised work, like the hanashobu seen on this bowl, brought a painterly sensibility into the amber surface without ever breaking the meditative quiet of the form. He served as a central figure in the Ohi lineage during a period when the ninth generation was expected both to preserve the tradition and to breathe into it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe hanashobu itself carries weight in Japanese seasonal poetics. The iris blooms in the rainy weeks of early summer, when the light is silver and the garden is heavy with water. It is the flower of the fifth month, of passage and quiet renewal. To incise it into an amber tea bowl is to gather two seasons into one object: the warm amber of late autumn in the glaze, and the cool green silence of early summer in the drawing. The bowl holds both, and hands it to the guest.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e[ DEEP-DIVE COMMENTARY ]\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eTo hold this chawan is to feel the full weight of the Ohi decision — the decision, made three and a half centuries ago, to never use the wheel. The wheel is fast. The wheel is symmetrical. The wheel flatters the maker. Hand-building is slow, uneven, and unforgiving, and it leaves every thought of the potter legible in the wall of the bowl. Ohi Chozaemon IX built this bowl the way his ancestors built theirs in 1666: palm against clay, thumb into the foot, the rim rising where the hand lifted it and settling where the hand relaxed. That slowness is not technique. It is a stance toward time.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e🔹 [ Deep-Dive Commentary ]\u003cbr\u003eThe amber glaze rewards long looking. Under raking light, the surface breaks into three readings at once. There is the highest layer — glassy, almost wet-looking — where the glaze pooled and crawled. There is the middle layer, where it turns translucent and you begin to see the texture of the clay body like the grain of wood under varnish. And there is the deepest layer, the base, where the glaze thinned over the incised lines of the iris and the drawing surfaces as a ghost. This three-layered depth is what separates Ohi ame from an ordinary brown glaze. It is not a color. It is a distance.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAnd then there is the drawing itself — the hanashobu, cut into the clay with a single tool, probably in a few seconds, probably without hesitation. The iris does not describe. It suggests. A few strokes carry the leaf, a few more the blossom, and the rest is left to the amber and to the eye. This is the same economy that governs the best sumi-e paintings: the brush sets down enough, and stops. When this bowl is used in tea, the guest, after drinking, turns the bowl in both hands to admire it. The iris appears, disappears, and appears again. The bowl does not announce its drawing. It lets it be discovered.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e[ CONDITION ]\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eNo conspicuous damage. Glaze and body in sound condition throughout, with the natural depth and pooling expected of hand-built Ohi ware. Signed tomobako included; the box shows very slight age-darkening (yake) consistent with its years — a quiet mark of authenticity.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDimensions: approx. 12.7 cm diameter x 7.2 cm height.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e[ 日本語解説 ]\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e加賀茶陶の宗家、九代 大樋長左衛門（1927-1986）による手捏ねの茶碗です。大樋焼の代名詞である飴釉が厚くかかり、見込みには澄んだ琥珀の池がひろがります。胴には花菖蒲が線彫りで描かれ、飴釉の下にそっと沈んで、光の加減でゆっくりと姿を現します。\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e大樋焼は寛文六年（1666年）、加賀藩五代藩主・前田綱紀が裏千家四世・仙叟宗室を金沢に招いた折に始まりました。仙叟に同行した楽家の職人・長左衛門が、金沢郊外の大樋村で良土を見出し、窯を築いたのが初代。以来三百五十余年、大樋の名は一度も途切れることなく金沢の地で継承されてきました。轆轤を使わず、手捏ねで茶碗をつくるという楽焼の流儀を守りながら、京の黒楽・赤楽とは異なる「飴釉」という独自の道を選んだ――この一点が、大樋を加賀茶陶の中心に据えました。\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e九代長左衛門は昭和四十一年に襲名。戦後の茶陶に静かな骨格を与えた作家として知られ、伝統の手捏ねの柔らかさを保ちながら、線彫りの絵付けに現代的な余白感覚を持ち込みました。本碗の花菖蒲も、描写ではなく気配の描き方で、飴釉の奥にしずかに閉じこめられています。花菖蒲は五月――移ろいと静謐の花。琥珀色の秋と、翡翠色の初夏を、ひとつの碗のなかに収めた一客です。\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e寸法：径約12.7cm／高さ約7.2cm。共箱あり、箱にわずかなヤケがございますが、本体に目立つ傷はございません。\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e[ SIZE ]\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDiameter: approx. 12.7 cm (5.0 in)\u003cbr\u003eHeight: approx. 7.2 cm (2.8 in)\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e🔹 [ 日本語解説 ]\u003cbr\u003e加賀茶陶の宗家・九代大樋長左衛門（1927-1986）による手捏ねの茶碗。大樋焼を象徴する飴釉が厚くかかり、見込みには澄んだ琥珀の池がひろがる。胴には花菖蒲が線彫りで描かれ、釉薬の下にしずかに沈む。裏千家四世・仙叟宗室が金沢に招いた初代長左衛門以来、三百五十余年続く大樋の正統。九代は戦後の茶陶に静かな骨格を与えた作家として知られる。\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e🔹 [ SHIPPING \u0026amp; PACKAGING ]\u003cbr\u003e• Dispatch: Within 1-6 business days\u003cbr\u003e• Carrier: Japan Post EMS \/ UPS (with tracking)\u003cbr\u003e• Packaging: Carefully wrapped with protective materials","brand":"The Modern Zen Archive","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":61741736264050,"sku":"260406_a_2651","price":2816.0,"currency_code":"AED","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0960\/5680\/3698\/files\/m86954565952_1.jpg?v=1775486005","url":"https:\/\/checkout.themodernzenarchive.com\/products\/ohi-chozaemon-ix-chawan-ame-glaze-hanashobu-iris-tea-bowl-kanazawa-ohi-ware-urasenke-hand-built-matcha-chawan-with-tomobako","provider":"The Modern Zen Archive","version":"1.0","type":"link"}