He was born the son of a silk merchant. He became one of the greatest painters in clay Japan has ever produced.

Ogata Kenzan (尾形乾山, 1663–1743) came to ceramics late and transformed them entirely. Studying first under Nonomura Ninsei, the master of overglaze painting in Kyoto, Kenzan developed a style entirely his own — one that treated the surface of a bowl the way his brother Kōrin treated a folding screen.

Ink brushwork, poetry, seasonal motifs, all rendered with a painter’s sensibility rather than a potter’s restraint. Fourteen of his works are designated Important Cultural Properties of Japan.

The willow (柳, yanagi) and the cherry (桜, sakura) appear together in classical Japanese aesthetics as the defining motifs of spring — the sakura brief and brilliant, the yanagi long-stemmed and enduring, bending without breaking in the same wind thatscatters the blossoms. Together, they are the full story of the season: beauty that arrives suddenly and knows how to leave.

This piece.

Made by Hashimoto Kisen (橋本喜泉造), a Kyoto studio ceramist working in the Kenzan tradition
(乾山写 — Kenzan-utsushi, a work made in the spirit and style of Kenzan). The willow and cherry are rendered in understated tones against a soft clay ground — precise where it needs to be, and loose where the brush found its own way. The form is classical: wide enough to whisk freely, deep enough to hold the ritual.

The bowl comes in its original wooden box (共箱).

To use this bowl in spring is to do what Kenzan always believed: that beauty and utility are not
separate. That the bowl you drink from should also be something worth looking at when the tea is gone.

Only one exists.