Grass script poems are scrawled across the raw clay surface of this tea pot by Otagaki Rengetsu. Although we have not been able to decipher the first verse, the second poem is:
Inishie no aki ni / Seeming to call out: kaere to maneku ran / Past autumns return aretaru yado no / A neglected hut's shino no osusuki / bamboo grasses
The tea pot is 17 x 15.5 x 12.5 cm (roughly 7 x 6 x 5 inches) and is in excellent original condition, enclosed in an old wooden carrying box.
Otagaki Rengetsu (1791-1875) was born into a samurai family, she was adopted into the Otagaki family soon after birth, and served as a lady in waiting in Kameoka Castle in her formative years, where she received an education worthy of a Lady of means. Reputed to be incredibly beautiful, she was married and bore three children; however, her husband and all children died before she was twenty. Remarried she bore another daughter, however that child too perished and her husband died while she was just 32. Inconsolable, she cut off her hair to join the nunnery at Chion-in Temple, where she renounced the world and received the name Rengetsu (Lotus Moon). However, this was not the end, but only the beginning of a career as artist and poet which would propel her to the top of the 19th century Japan literati art world.
