Raku Ware: The Hand-Formed Tea Bowl, 15 Generations On

Ask someone for the most Japanese piece of pottery there is, and a Raku tea bowl will always be among the answers. That is because Raku is the history and philosophy of Japanese ceramics in the shape of a bowl. The spirit of wabi-cha that Sen no Rikyu embodied — that complete beauty lies precisely within imperfection. Nothing embodies that philosophy in a purer form than a Raku tea bowl.

Born in sixteenth-century Kyoto and, more than 450 years on, still carried by a single family, the Raku house, Raku ware is not simply the production of tea utensils. It is a living cultural inheritance that keeps passing a Japanese aesthetic and philosophy to the next generation.

The Birth of Raku Ware and the Meeting With Sen no Rikyu

The completion of wabi-cha and a revolution in the tea bowl

Japan in the late sixteenth century was in upheaval, the end of the Warring States period overlapping with the beginning of the early modern era. Until then, tea had also been an arena in which warlords displayed their power, and the lavish tea bowls imported from China — karamono — were the prized objects.

The tea master Sen no Rikyu (1522–1591) opposed that current head-on. In completing the spirit of wabi-cha — finding beauty in simplicity and stillness — Rikyu posed a fundamental question about the utensils themselves. A tea bowl need not be a lavish Chinese one. A bowl born of Japanese clay and Japanese sensibility, holding the beauty of wabi, is the true tea bowl.

The person who gave that idea a physical form was Chojiro, a roof-tile maker in Kyoto. The wabi tea bowl born of the collaboration between Rikyu and Chojiro is the origin of Raku ware.

The bowls Chojiro made overturned the conventions of ceramics at the time. No wheel: the clay was wedged by hand and shaped with the fingers, a technique called tebineri. The glaze was black or red only. The form was asymmetrical, slightly distorted. That is where Raku ware begins.

And that very imperfection matched the spirit of wabi-cha exactly. In the light falling through the small window of a tea room, white matcha foaming in a black bowl. It was a beauty that touched people deeply precisely because it was not perfect.

The founding of the Raku house

Chojiro's successor Tanaka Sokei was granted the character raku by Toyotomi Hideyoshi, who had unified Japan, and from then the Raku house was established as a line of potters continuing through the generations. The present head is the sixteenth Raku Kichizaemon, and the family has protected the tradition of Raku ware for more than 450 years.

Raku Technique: Hand-Building and the Philosophy of the Draw

Tebineri, without a wheel

The defining feature of Raku ware is hand-building without a wheel.

The maker wedges the clay in both hands, presses it open with the fingers and forms the shape. That process leaves the marks of the maker's fingers directly in the clay. It is Rikyu's philosophy made concrete: a bowl should hold the warmth of the hand that uses it.

A wheel-thrown piece aims at a perfect circle. Hand-built Raku takes the deliberate position that it need not be a perfect circle at all. The subtle distortion and asymmetry that result produce a softness that settles exactly into the hands of the person holding the bowl.

Glazing and firing

Raku glazes are mainly of two kinds, black and red.

• Kuro-Raku (black Raku)　A black glaze containing manganese oxide and iron. Fired hard in the kiln, the black takes on a depth in which you seem to see a universe. It was the colour Rikyu loved most.
• Aka-Raku (red Raku)　A red glaze containing iron oxide. Warmer than black Raku, the red glows in the light and carries a sense of vitality. It is said that red Raku shines in bright places, black Raku in dark ones.

Firing takes place in a small Raku kiln at a relatively low temperature (800–1,100°C). The firing is also shorter than for other pottery, keeping the distinctive Raku approach of firing one piece with full attention.

The miracle of yohen at the moment of the draw

One of the most dramatic moments in Raku is the instant the piece is drawn from the kiln.

The piece is lifted out of the hot kiln with specialised tongs and cooled in the open air. During that process the glaze undergoes unpredictable change. This is called yohen.

The silver sheen that appears on the surface of black Raku, the subtle unevenness of colour on red Raku — these are gifts of flame and time that the maker cannot control. Few Japanese ceramics place chance at the centre of their philosophy as thoroughly as Raku.

Raku Ware and the Way of Tea

In tea, a bowl is not simply a container but the centre of a whole experience: looking, touching, using. The way of tea even prescribes how a bowl is appreciated, through what are called its midokoro, its points of interest. A tea bowl has three main ones.

• Shomen (the front)　Every tea bowl has a front. The face where the piece's particular surface — its keshiki, the run of the glaze and the yohen — is most beautiful is taken as the front and turned toward the guest.
• Kodai (the foot ring)　The making of the base shows the maker's skill and philosophy. On Raku ware, the foot ring especially rewards close looking.
• Kuchi-tsukuri (the rim)　The shape and thickness of the drinking edge. Neither too thin nor too thick, a rim that meets the lips naturally is the ideal.

Why Raku ranks first in tea

A Raku bowl holds a special position in tea. In the saying that ranks tea bowls — "first Raku, second Hagi, third Karatsu" — it is Raku that stands at the head.

The reason is that Raku is the ware that embodies the spirit of wabi-cha most purely. Not lavishness but depth of spirit. That is the value tea prizes above all, and Raku embodies it.

What Raku Carries Into the World

In our own time, Raku has branched into an entirely different style: American Raku.

American Raku is a firing method that developed and established itself in the West out of traditional Japanese Raku. Japanese Raku is said to have been introduced abroad by the British potter Bernard Leach and others. To Western makers of the day, the black Raku technique of plunging a bowl heated above 1,000°C into water, and the method of altering a glaze by smoking it with leaves or sawdust, looked entirely new. Its improvisational quality in particular seems to have appealed strongly to rationalist Western artists.

Then, in the 1960s, the American potter Paul Soldner brought it to the United States, where it branched into the wholly separate style now called American Raku.

What Characterises American Raku

American Raku takes Japanese technique as a reference but has developed on its own terms. Where Japanese Raku is fundamentally black and red, American Raku is intensely colourful.

Using glazes containing metals such as copper and applying reduction through smoking produces iridescent, gold and copper-like metallic shine.

The contrast between turquoise or white glaze and a body blackened by smoke is extremely strong, giving the work the feel of contemporary art. Free creation unbound by the form of a tea bowl is another characteristic.

What has carried across most fully from Raku is contingency. Because the wind direction at the moment of the draw, the amount of sawdust and the timing of insertion change the surface every time, the attitude of enjoying work as art produced by chance follows the aesthetic of Raku itself. The philosophy of making and the technique differ greatly from Japanese Raku, but the spirit — seeking the beauty of a piece between chance and intent — is shared. That the thinking behind Raku crossed the Pacific and produced new work shows the universal force it carries.

The Complete Beauty Within Raku's Imperfection

When you hold a Raku tea bowl, you are touching 450 years. The wabi-cha spirit of Sen no Rikyu, the marks of Chojiro's fingers, generations of thought within the Raku house — all of it compressed into a single piece.

It is a bowl that is not perfect. Distorted, asymmetrical, its yohen markings unpredictable. But that is exactly why it settles into the shape of your hand, carries a surface that is yours alone, and makes your time with tea a singular thing.

Take your first step here toward the deep Japanese idea of the beauty of imperfection.

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