Kategorie: East Asia

Tea labelling II

Drawing a conclusion after my presentation, my professor wasn’t so satisfied with the work I did. I tried to attach the labelling I learned from the Japanese way.  Sadly, since it’s a Korean tea bowl, it should be labelled with Korean tea terms.

For Chinese, there is this fantastic website called Babelcarp. (I’m still smiling when I read the title…) My book on Korean Tea is still not in my arms. Sad, sad world. Waiting for a book is worse than waiting for a lover.

I will try to contact Seongju to help  me out. Let’s see…

again late for chinese class

oh, dear. i hate getting up at 6am… so i got up at 7am, decided to skip again and work at home. -.-
anyways. i wanted to post here since i held my presentation. my professor wasn’t so satisfied i think. she yelled, „japanese labelling of korea tea bowls has to stop!“ and then she said very quickly some korean words for labelling bowls that i could not quite made out. i will go to her today to ask again.
also, i think my main failure was that i was researching for „茶碗“ (japanese) instead of „bowls“ (korean word).
i read already that the bowls were peasant, common bowls (which isn’t an insult or something romantic… just the fact, used for tea, rice, soup, cidre…) and that the japanese used them ONLY for tea.

so, my second failure based on this wrong research was to present no buncheong wares, but wares from japanese museums only. of course, i could not find any „teabowls“ in the korean museums. i should have searched for „bowl“+“16c“+“korea“+ maybe buncheong, but im not sure if it is buncheong (but, then, what could it be else? it has some semi-seladonish glaze, but it’s definately not seladon…)

aya… i feel like a freshmen again…

babbling further on…

So, I found some really interesting pieces in the Freer&Sackler… Like this one…

I am still not satisfied with my yondering and pondering about the plain copying of Japanese made up „identities“ for pots… (As in Cort 1992, Chanoyu 71)
What made so many people drive to consider these labels as superior?

Why do we have a huge interest in Japan and Japaneseness but not in other asian countries? Is there some „Koreanxiety“? Why is access to specified literature so limited here?
I saw a really good bibliography of the University of Hawai’i (by Kenneth Robinson), but most of the mentioned are not to be read in Germany. A shame…

I look forward to my pilgrimage in February… as Marichi called it…

Chemistry Corner
General Overview
Useful Database
John Baymore’s Thoughts

Tea labelling

I want to start with a rather specific question. I saw there are different terms taken from Japanese for labelling. Please excuse my bad translations to English.

I. CLASSIFICATION OF TEA WARE
ie. Raku, Hagi, Karatsu and so forth;

II. DESCRIBING OUTER APPEARANCE OF TEA WARE
ie. 茶だまり cha damari (tea lake), 口造り kuchi tsukuri (mouth of cup), 目跡 moku ato (marks of stacking) and so forth;

III. DESCRIBING PHENOMENA
ie. 雨漏 amamori („rain-through“ or tea stains caused by semipermeablility), 緋色 hi-iro (fire stains), 巣穴 suana (pin holes in shino ware), ??? kin-zukumoi (gold repair) and so forth.

Well, this is how I would differenciate between types of labelling. I am open for other suggestions, but this might be a whole different discussion 😉
This is leading to my question. I am very disconcert by those terms in a whole. For group number one, „classification of tea ware“, one can easily fight for hours what Raku exactly is, and what can or cannot be called Raku.
For group number two, For me, this is the least troubling group, since archaeology did a good job on this and most of it is purely translation work IMHO. One has only to be careful not to mix these terms with group number three (like, is moku ato a general term that appears or can it be considered as a phemomena?)
Coming to the group causing me sleepless nights bathing in sweat: Number three.
*Where exactly are these terms coming from?
*Who labelled these?
*How open or differenciated is the label?
I read them every so often in catalogues, sometimes with, sometimes without Kanji, but I cannot stop wondering what they exactly describe. For example, what is the difference between 巣穴 suana and ゆず肌 yuzuhada (citron skin) exactly? What makes a tiny hole a 巣穴 suana? Shall or shant it be of black-ish colour? Can it only be applied to Shino ceramics or can it also be used describing other ceramics with those phenomenon? What about 雨漏 amamori? What’s the dfference between this and 茶渋 cha shibu, tea stains?

Lots of question marks above my head.

a student’s life

my super intense lecture on contemporary asian art and biennales is over… the conference was held… and now i’m up to my ears into chinese archaeology. it’s really interesting, my workflow this semester is like a constant streaming river. never had this before. also, i’m still much into teacup studies for my personal enjoyment. (yeah, the old crusty wound is ripped open again…) finally, i can hold a presentation on some korean teacup with much more ease than ever before. i know where to look for footnotes before i even wrote them down, and i have several concepts in mind that i can attach. it’s great.

i feel quite relaxed, although i should struggle a lot more, as my boyfriend implies… aya…

this time, i am all excited about a korea teapot, the japanese classification is „堅 katade“ (hard), „雨漏 amamori“ (rain-through, darker spots of usage can be seen). i found some interesting information at marshalN’s blog. also, DARUMA mag served me well once again, yay.
Miho (miho.jp) and Nezu (nezu-muse.or.jp) museums both got those styles of teapots.

my new fancy is korean tea… for a first read, i ordered
„The Book of Korean Tea. A Guide to the History, Culture, Philosophy of Korean Tea and the Tea Ceremony“ by Yang-Seok (Fred) Yoo 2007, Myung Won Cultural Foundation, ISBN: 9788995502129

i did not order „The Korean Way of Tea : An Introductory Guide“, by Brother Anthony of Taize and Hong Kyeong-Hee 2007, because it can be found as an online edition: https://hompi.sogang.ac.kr/anthony/kortea.htm

i want to draw some similarities to hagi and karatsu ware, and also take a closer look at ido ware in general since katade-amamoris can be considered a sub group of that…

And I’m craving for the following book, as seen on https://teaarts.blogspot.com, but cannot find one single page to order it… what a shame… maybe it’s too progressive for amazon or what?? oooooo… i so want it >.<*

„中英文“茶学术语“ Chinese-English Tea Studies Terminology
蔡荣章*琼斯史迪芬 编译 Tsai, Rong-Tsang and Steven R. Jones, Translators and Editors (Sep. 22, 2009)

目录Table of Contents
第一章 茶树裁培、采青、初制 Chapter One Tea Cultivation, Tea Harvesting, and Tea
Primary Processing
第二章 茶叶精制、加工、包装 Chapter Two Tea Refining, Added Processing, and Packaging
第三章 茶之分类与识别 Chapter Three Classification and Recognition of Tea
第四章 泡茶原理 Chapter Four Tea Brewing Principles
第五章 十大泡茶法 Chapter Five The Ten Tea Methods
第六章 陶瓷艺术 Chapter Six Ceramics
第七章 茶具名称与功能 Chapter Seven Kinds of Tea Ware and Functionality
第八章 茶会 Chapter Eight Tea Functions
第九章 中国茶史 Chapter Nine Chinese Tea History
第十章 日韩英茶文化 Chapter Ten Japanese, Korean, and British Tea Culture
第十一章 茶诗与健康 Chapter Eleven Tea Poetry and Health
第十二章 茶学综论 Chapter Twelve Tea Studies Review