Tea ceremony using Ishikawa tea ware
Nakata was invited to the Urasenke tea ceremony held at the D. T. Suzuki Museum hosted by Urasenke Munehisa Nara (Konnichian Gyoutei Instructor). Urasenke is the largest school of all tea ceremony schools. Nara is an instructor of Urasenke, regularly visiting and instructing in Kyoto, Kanazawa and other regional branches while constantly striving to develop his own skills. For this particular tea ceremony held at night, he had arranged for tea equipment that were all made by local artists of Ishikawa Prefecture. The tea container with ”matcha”, the beautiful lacquerware ”natsume” are works by Hikoju ”makie” lacquer artist, Takashi Wakamiya.
Enjoying the tea and tea ware
In the tranquility, we hear nothing but the whisking of the tea. Nakata asked Nara, ”Have you designed any pottery lately?” Nara replied, ”I want to, as I want to understand the minds of the creators.” He prepared tea for us with an Ohi Chozaemon the 10th ”matcha” bowl that had just been presented the day before at an exhibition. The novel design made with ”kakewake” technique, a method of pouring different glazes one at a time, is truly contemporary.
