HAMBURG.- Japanese tea ceramics are valued by so-called tea people (chajin) for qualities that go far beyond mere utility. When used in the ritualised traditional tea ceremony (chanoyu, literally “hot water for tea”), the individual vessels take on a very personal meaning. Outstanding pieces are even given names by their makers, or more often by their owners. For each tea ceremony, the host tries to select just the right vessels and utensils for the particular occasion, the season and the expected guests. In the exhibition Among Friends: Japanese Tea Ceramics, the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg presents over 150 outstanding objects connected with the tea ceremony, including tea bowls (chawan), water jars (mizusashi), vases (hanaire) and tea containers (chaire) representing the foremost Japanese ceramics centres and spanning a timeframe from the sixteenth century to today. A special focus is placed on the personal significance these unique pieces develop for those who own and use them. The point of departure for the show is the friendship between MKG’s founding director, Justus Brinckmann (1843–1915), and the art dealer and collector S. Bing (1838–1905), a relationship that was vital to the development of the collection of Japanese tea ceramics at MKG. Another, modern-day, friendship that plays a role in the exhibition is that between the ceramist Jan Kollwitz (b. 1960) and the author and ceramics collector Christoph Peters (b. 1966). MKG invited the two “tea people” to help design the presentation – integrating works by Kollwitz and pieces from Peters’ collection. Also participating is the Hamburg section of the Urasenke tea school, which has been practicing chanoyu at MKG’s Shōseian Tea House for over 40 years. The members have put together ceramics ensembles for different occasions in order to demonstrate how the individual sets of utensils used to prepare the green powdered matcha tea during a tea gathering enter into a silent dialogue with one another and thereby stimulate conversation among host and guests. A small selection of historical and modern pieces offers visitors the opportunity to touch and experience their surfaces and qualities with their own hands.

The Kyoto-based Urasenke Tea School made MKG the gift of the Shōseian (Arbour of Pure Pines) tea house in 1978. The tea ceremony (chanoyu) is practiced there every week and presented to the public every month. MKG has invited the group from the tea school active at the tea house, together with Christoph Peters, a regular chanoyu practitioner, to put together exemplary tea sets for preparing light tea (usucha) and thick tea (koicha). At every tea gathering, and even when merely practising the detailed sequence of actions involved, the utensils are carefully selected for the respective occasion and guests. The pieces chosen act as tangible means of communication between host and guests. The high point of a tea gathering is when all the guests drink the thick tea from the same bowl, passing it from one to the other. The sets on view compellingly demonstrate how each individual object unfolds its effects singly and in concert with the others, depending on the persons involved and the occasion. Decorated pieces may give an indication of a particular season or time of day. Other objects demand our patience in gradually developing a feeling for the beauty of simplicity and sometimes also of imperfection. Gold lacquer repairs convey respect for handmade pieces marked by age. To this day, the values put forth by tea master Sen no Rikyū (1521–1591) – harmony (wa), respect (kei), purity (sei) and inner peace (jaku) – are regarded as the principle standards for tea ceramics.

These values also serve the ceramist Jan Kollwitz as a guideline for producing his works according to traditional models from Shigaraki, Iga and other ceramics centres. Kollwitz has been firing his works for over 30 years in a Japanese anagama wood kiln in the monastery village of Cismar in Schleswig-Holstein. He learned the complex technique in Echizen, one of the oldest ceramics centres in Japan. Most of his works go into the kiln unglazed and receive natural ash glazes during the four-day and four-night firing process. At over 1,250 degrees Celsius, the swirling wood ash fuses with the clay surface. The resulting colouration and glaze varies depends on the type of clay and the location of the piece in the kiln. The kiln in Cismar, built in 1988 by a renowned Japanese master kiln builder, was the basis for Christoph Peters’ novel Herr Yamashiro bevorzugt Kartoffeln (Mr. Yamashiro Prefers Potatoes, 2014). The writer is an avid collector of tea ceramics and a friend of Kollwitz. Together with works from the MKG collection, loans made by Peters provide a comprehensive overview of the most important types of Japanese tea ceramics and the main kilns. With objects dating from the sixteenth century to the present, the exhibition traces historical developments and the evolution of standards for evaluating ceramic works, as well as presenting the key utensils for preparing matcha. These include the tea bowls themselves (chawan), water jars (mizusashi), vases (hanaire), and the many different plates, platters and bowls for food (kaiseki) that are used during a tea gathering.

The juxtaposition of ceramics from Christoph Peters’ collection and that of MKG tellingly reveals how the latter was strongly influenced by tastes around 1900, and especially by the friendship between Justus Brinckmann and the art dealer and ceramics connoisseur S. Bing. Born in 1838 in Hamburg as Siegfried Bing, the dealer became a French citizen in 1876 under the name Samuel Bing. He opened a gallery for East Asian art in France in 1878. In 1895, he then turned his attention with his second gallery, Maison de l’Art Nouveau, to the style of decorative art known in German as Jugendstil, thereby coining its French name. The approximately 150 pieces Bing sold to Brinckmann at this time formed the basis for the collection of Japanese tea ceramics at MKG. It is made up mostly of pieces produced in Kyoto from the early sixteenth to the late nineteenth century. Ceramics from Japan’s former capital, decorated with enamel paint atop the glaze, were congenial to European tastes around 1900. The Raku bowls, whose bold red and black glazes are created by pulling them out of the oven when the temperature is still at approx. 900 degrees Celsius, are still very popular even today. Works by Ogata Kenzan (1663–1743), likewise active in Kyoto, are a special highlight in MKG’s collection of Japanese ceramics, which comprises more than 700 pieces. Characteristic for Brinckmann’s early engagement with Japanese art and his urge to share it with others is that he immediately published the pieces he had amassed in the world’s first study of Ogata Kenzan (Kenzan. Beiträge zur Geschichte der japanischen Töpferkunst, 1897). The collector Charles Lang Freer (1854– 1919) had the treatise translated into English and was inspired to begin his own Kenzan collection, which is now housed in the Freer Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, in Washington, D.C. The exhibition Among Friends: Japanese Tea Ceramics tells the story of this collecting activity as part of a project for academic research into MKG’s East Asia Collection sponsored by the Zeit-Stiftung Ebelin und Gerd Bucerius.