About Raku
It all began with tea.
In China three thousand years ago, tea was a medicine to relieve fatigue, to delight the soul, to strengthen the will and to repair eyesight. As a paste it was used to reduce rheumatic pain.
An ancient Chinese legend tells of the sage, Dharuma, who, during one of his prolonged periods of meditation, found to his annoyance that he was becoming drowsy. Seizing his offending eyelids, he cut them off and cast them away. They took root where they fell and grew into tea plants, the leaves of which can be prepared as a drink which drives away sleep.
In the eighth century tea leaves were ground to a fine powder and whipped in hot water with a whisk made from split bamboo. Zen Buddhist monks would pass a bowl of tea from one to another as they meditated for hours in front of a statue of their founder, Bodhi Dhama, as they strove to attain supreme self-realisation.
Tea plants were taken from China to many countries in the east including Japan where Zen Buddhism flourished.
Then in the sixteenth century came the tea ceremony. It started as an extension to the monks meditating before their Bodhi but ultimately became an idealised ritual.
The ceremony was conducted in a tea house or room which was an oasis in the dreary waste of existence. Not a colour to disturb the tone of the room, not a sound to mar the rhythm of things, not a gesture to obtrude on the harmony, not a word to break the unity of the surroundings.
The simplicity of the tea room and its freedom from vulgarity made it truly a sanctuary from the vexations of the outer world. The room measured about ten feet square and was designed to take five people, a number suggestive of the saying, "more than the Graces and less than the Muses". The door was only three feet high so guests had to stoop or crawl through it as an act of humility. The only sound was the boiling of the iron kettle with metal pieces inside it to make a delicate tinkling noise. The sole decoration was a flower arrangement, a simple line drawing or a sculpture. The climax of the ceremony was pouring hot water onto the powdered tea in a bowl which would have been made by a local potter.
But in the gardens of the Imperial Palace in Kyoto during the second half of the sixteenth century, the bowl would have been made by the Emperor's favoured tea bowl maker – Chojiro. The Emperor had been so impressed with Chojiro's work that he awarded him a gold seal engraved with the word 'Raku'. This gave Chojiro the unique right to call his ware Raku. Everybody else had to use their family, village or area name, even if they used the same firing technique as Chojiro. The Japanese word 'raku' has many meanings including comfortable, enjoyment, at one's ease, and pleasure.
Raku is therefore the brand name of Chojiro's pottery in Kyoto. His workshop is still there and Raku is still being made in it by the fifteenth generation holder of the gold seal. Today the pottery is in the hands of Kichiemon who takes exception to western potters calling their work raku. In 1979 there was a confrontation between Mr Kichiemon and two 'raku' potters from the USA, Paul Soldner and Rick Hirsch. The Americans were told in no uncertain terms that Mr Kichiemon alone had the exclusive right to call his ware Raku. Paul Soldner suggested he and others like him should call their ware Ukar, Raku backwards. Unfortunately, the word raku had by then become part of the pottery language in the west and Ukar never caught on.
