Chigusa and the Art of Tea

This innovative book narrates the history of a single objecta tea-leaf storage jar created in southern China during the thirteenth or fourteenth centuriesand describes how its role changed after it was imported to Japan and passed from owner to owner there. In Japan, where the jar was in constant use for more than seven hundred years, it was transformed from a humble vessel into a celebrated object used in chanoyu (often translated in English as tea ceremony), renowned for its aesthetic and functional qualities, and awarded the name Chigusa.

Few extant tea utensils possess the quantity and quality of the accessories associated with Chigusa, material that enables modern scholars and tea aficionados to trace the jars evolving history of ownership and appreciation. Tea diaries indicate that the lavish accessoriesthe silk net bag, cover, and cordsthat still accompany the jar were prepared in the early sixteenth century by its first recorded owner.