A wan-gata ceramic bowl for use with Maccha Tea decorated with majestic bamboo by important painter Takeuchi Seiho enclosed in a fine kiri-wood box signed by the artist. It comes with a cotton buffer wrapped in a chord bound silk lined pouch. The bowl is 13.5 cm (5-1/2 inches) diameter, 7 cm (3 inches) tall and is in excellent condition.
Takeuchi Seiho (1864-1943) will be a subject of any discussion of 20th century Japanese art. He learned painting from the famous Shijo school artist Kono Bairei and traveled to Europe, where he solidified his own unique style. One of the most influential of early 20th century painters, he served as a teacher at the Kyoto Municipal School of Arts and Crafts, a member of the Imperial Art Academy and was a member of the Bunten from its establishment, serving on the selection committee. He is hailed as one of the founders of the modern Kyoto School, and received innumerable awards including the order of Cultural Merit.
According to tradition, the origins of Asahi ware date to the Keichō era (1596–1615), when Okumura Jirōemon established a kiln in Uji. During the Shōhō era (1644–1648), the tea master and daimyo Kobori Enshū encouraged the study of Korean tea-bowl techniques, and Asahi came to be counted among the celebrated Enshū's Seven Kilns. Even after Enshū's death, the kiln remained under the patronage of the Kobori family, and Kobori Gonjūrō Masayoshi bestowed upon it the name "Asahi."
Asahi ware is produced in Uji, Kyoto, a place renowned as a center of tea culture. Its origins date back some 400 years to the Keichō era. This was the age in which Sen no Rikyū brought chanoyu to maturity and Kobori Enshū emerged as a leading tea master. Enshū had close ties to Uji, which was then gaining prominence as a tea-producing region, and he contributed greatly to the rising status of Uji tea. The first-generation potter was granted the kiln name “Asahi” by Enshū, which is why Asahi ware came to be counted among Enshū’s Seven Kilns. In the early Edo period, as both Uji tea and chanoyu flourished, Asahi ware reached its first golden age, with tea bowls, water jars, and other tea utensils made by the first through third generations prized by daimyo, court nobles, and tea practitioners. As the cultural center shifted from Kyoto to Edo, however, the kiln entered a long period of hardship. Under the ninth-generation Chōbei, Asahi ware once again prospered. During the turmoil of the Meiji period, many kilns were forced to close, and by the time of the twelfth-generation Shōsai, continuing production had become extremely difficult. Yet after a visit by the Crown Prince, the future Emperor Taishō, Asahi ware moved again toward revival. In 1922, Shōsai’s second son, Tsurunosuke, traveled to England, where at St Ives he built a climbing kiln for Bernard Leach in place of Hamada Shōji, who had returned to Japan because of the Great Kantō Earthquake. Through the hardships of wartime, when the production of ceramics became all but impossible, and other periods of adversity, the Asahi kiln has continued to persevere down to the present sixteenth-generation master Asahi Hosai.
