Login

Country

Cart

Your cart is empty
Front view of the Nakazato Tarouemon E-Karatsu matcha bowl with bamboo motif, showing a wide deep form with pale grey feldspathic glaze, a dense iron-oxide bamboo leaf cluster on the exterior wall, and an unglazed sandy clay foot ring.
Nakazato Tarouemon E-Karatsu Matcha Bowl Bamboo
Nakazato Tarouemon E-Karatsu Matcha Bowl Bamboo
Nakazato Tarouemon

Nakazato Tarouemon E-Karatsu Matcha Bowl Bamboo

Sale price$199.00

Karatsu ware has been associated with the tea ceremony since the Momoyama period, when tea masters including Furuta Oribe recognized in its coarse, unassuming character exactly the qualities the wabi aesthetic demanded. Among tea bowl traditions, Karatsu has held a position described in the old ranking — first Ido, second Raku, third Karatsu — a hierarchy that placed it among the most valued vessels for formal tea. This matcha bowl carries a pale feldspathic grey glaze, speckled with iron from the local clay fired beneath it, the surface matte and mineral in quality. A single bamboo leaf cluster is painted in dense iron-oxide on the exterior — 4 leaves rendered as solid forms, direct and unhesitating, the brushwork applied with the same economy that defines E-Karatsu across all its forms. Bamboo in Japanese ceramic and ink painting tradition represents resilience: it bends without breaking, returns upright. The foot is left unglazed, the sandy Karatsu clay visible at the base. The Nakazato family has maintained an unbroken lineage in Karatsu since 1615, now in its 14th generation.
Front view of the Nakazato Tarouemon E-Karatsu matcha bowl with bamboo motif, showing a wide deep form with pale grey feldspathic glaze, a dense iron-oxide bamboo leaf cluster on the exterior wall, and an unglazed sandy clay foot ring.
Nakazato Tarouemon E-Karatsu Matcha Bowl Bamboo Sale price$199.00

Meet the Artisan

Nakazato Tarouemon

Karatsu ware has occupied the highest tier of Japanese tea ceramics since the Momoyama period, when the phrase "first Ido, second Raku, third Karatsu" fixed its place in the hierarchy that tea masters lived by. The Nakazato family has been at the center of that tradition for approximately 430 years, beginning with Nakazato Matashichi, appointed master potter to one of the 3 official domain kilns of the Karatsu clan during the Edo period and the first to carry the name Tarouemon. That name has passed through 14 generations without interruption. The chapter that determined what the kiln stands for today belongs to the 12th generation, Nakazato Muan. By the 20th century the techniques of ko-Karatsu, the iron-glazed, ash-fired ceramics that had made the tradition famous, had largely disappeared. Muan spent decades at excavation sites across the Saga hills, studying ancient sherds, and reconstructing what had been lost. Chosen Karatsu and Madara Karatsu exist in living form today because of that work. In 1976, the Japanese government designated him a Living National Treasure for the preservation of Karatsu ware as a whole. The 14th Tarouemon, born in 1957, trained under his father before assuming the name in 2002. He works at the kiln where that recovery happened, making Karatsu ware whose depth of tradition few workshops anywhere in Japan can match.