Yuteki Tenmoku Tea Bowl

A Southern Song Jian Bowl, National Treasure since 1951

The Yuteki Tenmoku Tea Bowl (油滴天目茶碗, Yuteki Tenmoku Chawan) is a Chinese tea bowl of the Southern Song dynasty held by the Museum of Oriental Ceramics at 1-1-26 Nakanoshima, Kita Ward, Osaka City, designated an Important Cultural Property on 19 January 1931 and a National Treasure on 9 June 1951. The quantity is one bowl, the category applied arts, and the designation number 00010. It belongs to the city of Osaka.

The Agency for Cultural Affairs writes: the black-brown body, the jet-black tenmoku glaze, the form and the workmanship all display the character of Jian ware clearly. Granular spots of the kind commonly called yuteki are scattered over the whole of the inner and outer surfaces, and those areas alone give off a metallic sheen. This bowl is counted with the yuteki of the Unshu Matsudaira family as one of the two finest examples of yuteki. The crystals are large and the yuteki packed tightly across both surfaces, which is superb. A gilt rim encircles the mouth, and three lacquered tenmoku stands accompany it.

Jian ware means black-glazed bowls fired at the Jian kilns at Shuiji in northern Fujian province. In China they were held the finest bowls for drinking tea, and their name appears in Japanese documents as early as the Kamakura period. The word tenmoku is said to derive from Mount Tianmu in Zhejiang, but this bowl is a Jian product.

What Yuteki Is: Crystals Forming Within the Glaze

Yuteki, oil droplet, is the Japanese name for silver spots on a jet-black glaze that look like oil scattered on water. In China they were called dishu, a term recorded in the early Ming Gegu Yaolun.

The spots are crystals that form again within the glaze. When a glaze high in iron is applied thickly and fired, minerals within it crystallise and surface. Jian bowls can also show fine short streaks, called nogime after the awn of a grass; yuteki and nogime are two effects arising from the same glaze.

The Museum of Oriental Ceramics notes that the effect does not appear where the glaze is thin at the rim, or where it is thick at the centre of the interior and near the foot. Whether the spots form depends on the thickness of the glaze, so an even spread across a whole vessel is rare.

The Agency's phrase, the crystals are large and the yuteki packed tightly across both surfaces, is a judgement made against that difficulty.

Form and Dimensions

The bowl stands 7.0 centimetres high, with a mouth 12.3 centimetres across and a foot ring 4.3 centimetres across. The form is that of a Jian bowl, with a low, small foot.

The Agency's description of body and form continues: black glaze lies thickly inside and out, scattered with the granular spots commonly called yuteki, which give off a sheen. The outer body near the waist is left unglazed, showing a rather coarse iron-bearing clay, hard-fired and black-grey-brown in tone. A gilt rim encircles the mouth.

The unglazed area exposes the body directly. Leaving the lower part without glaze keeps it from running onto the kiln furniture during firing, and it is here that the quality of the clay can be judged.

The gilt rim is a metal band fitted over the lip, at once decorative and a reinforcement. The glaze at the rim of a Jian bowl is thin and chips easily, so such bands are often added.

Provenance: From Hidetsugu to the Sakai Family

The Agency records the descent precisely. It was owned by the regent Hidetsugu and is said to have been counted among the Jurakudai utensils. It passed later to Nishi Honganji, then to the Mitsui family of Rokkaku in Kyoto, then into the possession of the Sakai family, lords of Wakasa, was long handed down, and after passing through several hands became the property of the city of Osaka.

The Jurakudai utensils were those used by Toyotomi Hidetsugu at his Kyoto palace. Hidetsugu took his own life in 1595, after which the bowl moved through a temple, a merchant house and a daimyo family.

The Kundaikan Sochoki, a Muromachi manual for decorating a reception room, ranks yohen highest among tenmoku and yuteki next after it. That ranking, yuteki second to yohen, was already settled in the Muromachi period.

The Agency counts this bowl with the yuteki of the Unshu Matsudaira family as one of the two finest of its kind. Where the yohen bowls are three and called the three finest, the yuteki are two and called the pair.

Seeing It

The Museum of Oriental Ceramics reopened after rebuilding in April 2024. It opens from 9:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., last entry 4:30 p.m., closed on Mondays, or the next weekday when Monday is a holiday, and over the New Year.

Admission varies by exhibition, so check the museum's information before travelling. The bowl is also lent elsewhere, so confirm whether it is on display.

The museum has display cases lit by natural light. Yuteki turns silver or takes on a bluish cast depending on how the light falls, so the hour and the weather change what is seen. Near the marks left by the tea whisk on the inner surface the spots are said to shine with a blue tinge.

From Naniwabashi Station on the Keihan Nakanoshima Line it is about one minute on foot, or about five minutes from Yodoyabashi Station on the Osaka Metro Midosuji Line.