Tea Storage Jar

mid- to late 1600s

Tea Storage Jar, mid- to late 1600s. Nonomura Ninsei (Japanese, active 1600s). Stoneware with white glaze (Shigaraki style); height: 28.3 cm (11 1/8 in.); diameter: 28.7 cm (11 5/16 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Purchase from the J. H. Wade Fund 1978.6 Shigaraki ware is recognized for its warm orange color, asymmetrical round forms, and irregular natural ash glazes. These features were largely unintentional on the part of their makers, whose principal goal was a functional jar. Some tea masters employed Shigaraki vessels as found objects—items appropriated from one context for use in a new one—manifesting effortless and imperfect beauty. In Nonomura Ninsei’s take on Shigaraki, though, careful symmetry is used as a backdrop for deliberately subtle and pleasing deviations such as would appeal to a tea master interested in refined rusticity. This jar may be considered an example of the aesthetic known as kireisabi, or refined rusticity.