Perspectives on Tea

Continuing my updates from the past few months…

Back in October, I was contacted by a writer from a blog called Tea + Travel about participating in a series of interviews about tea ceremony. If you’d like to read it, the link is here:
http://travelandtea.com/2010/10/03/morgan-beard-philly-tea/

There were three other interviews in the series also. The first was from Gabriel Soga Caciula, who is an Urasenke teacher from Belgium:

“What is there, in Chado that attracts non-Japanese? I would say the same thing that attracts Japanese. In the space defined by the concepts mentioned before: aesthetics, philosophy, decorum, social entertainment, one can find the basic principles defining the spirituality of the way of tea, derived from the closeness of this practice to Zen Buddhism: Wa, Key, Sei, Jaku or Harmony, Respect, Purity, Tranquility.”
- Read the rest of the interview here: http://travelandtea.com/2010/10/01/the-way-of-tea-an-interview-with-gabriel-cacilua/

There was also one with Rebecca Lyn Cragg of Camellia Teas in Ottawa, Canada:

“For those who stand outside the Chanoyu Culture, looking in at something silent, mysterious, exotic and elaborate, they cannot often find or appreciate what it is that captures the hearts of practitioners. We in turn, are not always able to convey our fascination and commitment skillfully either. If I could offer an analogy, it might be a little like those who attend a classical concert: while the general audience may enjoy the melody, or harmony they hear, likely other musicians, particularly those of the same instrument – and even more so – those who have studied, played and enjoyed that particular composer’s piece, are best able to empathize and appreciate whether the musician has interpreted the piece well, or played that crescendo ‘correctly’, or not.
Athletes too I think could understand that ‘mastery’ is something we strive for throughout our lives. Playing a ‘perfect game’ is nearly impossible (as impossible as becoming a Tea ‘Master’, a term I strongly dislike). The people attending the sports game can cheer and be pleased with the outcome if the athlete wins, but not necessarily understand the brilliance of applying certain strategies, or understand the intricacies of what a move was particularly well-executed. In the end, the same is true of these tea rituals: likely only other practitioners (of the same school, and there are dozens of different tea schools), can really appreciate the time, effort, thoughtfulness and depth that has gone into creating a tea gathering. Still, the musician, athlete and tea practitioner continues to forge ahead, enjoying the collegiality as well as the general audience.”
- Read more: http://travelandtea.com/2010/10/07/the-way-of-tea-rebecca-lynn-craig-of-camellia-teas-in-ottawa-canada/

And Michael Ricci, an Urasenke instructor in Colorado:

The most two important things about adapting traditional tea ceremony into a different time and culture is balance and non-attachment. You must always respect the tradition as much as possible, but that doesn’t mean adhering to it always. It’s simply impossible to do that and a creative and sensitive person will find ways to make the translation both successful and enjoyable. By being balanced a person will have equal understanding of tradition and change, and by being non-attached a person will have the freedom and ability to make changes where they are needed without causing any kind of disturbance in himself or others.
- Read more: http://travelandtea.com/2010/10/19/the-way-of-tea-an-interview-with-michael-ricci%C2%A0colorado/

If you're interested in tea in general, there's lots of other great stuff on the Tea & Travel site too -- go and check it out at http://travelandtea.com

Clay + Fire = Awesome

I know it’s been a while since I updated the blog. I apologize sincerely for that, but I do have a good excuse… I just got married!

So with my lapse in tea discussion, I have a lot to talk about. Rather than going chronologically, which is just too predictable, I want to start with what happened this past weekend: a kiln firing.

I talked before about Willi Singleton, a local ceramic artist who, among other things, makes tea utensils. He trained for many years in Japan, and when he came back to this country he built a noborigama (a climbing kiln) on his property. The kiln is wood-fired, and it requires a lot of expertise to manage a firing properly. This past weekend I got to participate in one of those firings.

The actual firing began on Thursday afternoon, but it wasn’t until the last two days of the firing (Saturday and Sunday) that the helpers came in. Roughly, the process is this: Willi throws the pots and does the standard sorts of preparation – glazing, bisque firing – and then stacks the pots on shelves in the various chambers. The placement of pieces is crucial, because the flow of air (and especially airborne ash) through the kiln will determine how each piece looks. Certain glazes will produce a certain effect, but the temperature inside the kiln, air flow, and the ash itself all play into the process. It’s very unpredictable, but that’s what makes the end result beautiful.

Willi’s kiln has four chambers, but this time he was only firing two of them. The kiln is built into a hillside (hence the “climbing” part of the name), and the lowest part of the kiln is the firebox, which looks kind of like a fifth chamber. At the beginning of the firing process, Willi builds a fire in the firebox, and then gradually keeps the fire burning, building the temperature. Once the temperature inside the first kiln reaches a certain temperature, he stops stoking the firebox and starts stoking that first kiln, while simultaneously feeding the second kiln to prepare it for a full stoking. Once the second kiln gets to the right temperature, he starts stoking that one and feeding the third, and so on. Once the final kiln has been stoked for the right amount of time, he seals up all the holes in the kiln and allows the fire to smother out on its own.

Here’s a photo of the four chambers from the side. The brick archways covered over with the white substance (I think it’s some type of clay, but I forgot to ask) are actually the doors that Willi uses to access the chambers and insert/remove the pots.



I arrived Saturday night around 9:30. At that point, crews had already been working for many hours stoking the firebox. There were three people working the box, one on the central opening in the firebox, and one person each on two side ports. The photo below was taken when the openings were closed up, but you can see the opening in the middle and the ports above the cinder blocks:



The stoking has a rhythm. Someone (whoever has been designated to watch the fire) keeps an eye on air vents in the first chamber. When the flames coming out of the air vents fall to a certain level, someone tells the stokers to stoke – they all have to go at the same time – and the stokers at the ports remove the block closing the opening, add a set number of pieces of wood, and close the ports again, while the stoker in the center fills the opening with larger blocks of wood. Then everybody waits until the flames die down again, maybe 2-3 minutes.

This process continued for several hours. Along with the pots in the kiln are a series of 3-4 cones; I don’t know the technical details (maybe one of you can fill me in!) but when the first cone bends over and the second one is getting bendy, it’s time to move from stoking the firebox to stoke the first chamber. As luck would have it, that happened during my working shift, around 4 a.m.

Stoking the chambers is more difficult than stoking the firebox, because the goal is to keep the fire spread evenly throughout the kiln. Because the kiln is so wide, there’s one person on each side of the kiln, each stoking simultaneously. The stokers have to shoot thin pieces of wood through a hole that’s about six inches square into specific locations within the kiln. So, for example, Willi might say “two, two, two,” meaning that they have to shoot two pieces to the middle of the kiln, two pieces to a point that’s halfway between the middle and the edge, and drop two pieces on the ledge right below the opening. The stokers then keep an eye on the flames coming out of the vent holes above their heads, and call out to the other side when the flames are getting low. The goal is for the flames to go down at exactly the same time; if one side goes down too quickly, Willi (or the designated watcher) might tell the stoker to add just one more piece of wood to try to even it out.

As a rank amateur, I was given an easier job, feeding the second chamber. So after the stokers fed the first chamber, I put one piece of wood in the second chamber, alternating sides, so I was constantly moving back and forth. When they first started stoking the first chamber, I was literally running back and forth from one side to the other because they were stoking every 30 seconds or so; after a while, the pace slowed down to stoking every 1-2 minutes.

Here’s a photo of the process in action: there’s one person standing and watching the flame, and the person bending over is opening the access hole in preparation for stoking. (All of those photos were taken later in the process, when they were stoking the second chamber, but the principle is the same.)



Here’s another photo of the stoking process. You can see that one person is doing the actual stoking, and the person beside him is doing a secondary stoking to keep the fire even (and also fetching wood, which is a crucial part of the process).



And here’s Willi checking the progress of the pots:



My shift ended at 6 a.m., and I went to get some sleep. I came back to the kiln just before noon, at which point they were stoking the second chamber. The firing ended later that afternoon, but it’ll still be a while before Willi finds out how everything turned out – it takes about a week or so for the kiln to cool off to the point where it’s safe to go inside.

It was truly an amazing experience to take part in a firing like this, even though my part was a small one. There’s something really primal about tending the fire and watching its rhythms, and looking through the vent holes to see the pots undergoing their transformation. I can’t wait to see what comes out!

A Freer Excursion

Recently I went with a group of other tea people to the Freer Gallery in Washington D.C. The museum, which is part of the Smithsonian Institution, contains the collection of Charles Lang Freer, who collected all types of Asian art at the end of the nineteenth and early twentieth century – around the time that Japanese families were starting to sell off all their old art treasures following the dramatic shift in culture of the Meiji Period. The gallery has a truly stunning collection of tea ceremony utensils, only a fraction of which are on display. But if you want, you can make an appointment with the gallery to come and view the utensils that they have in storage – even take them out and handle them. For tea people, it’s an extraordinary opportunity to handle the types of utensils that we normally only read about in books.

We arrived at the Freer and were led down to their vaults in the basement. They have an aisle dedicated to tea ceremony wares, many of which date back to the late 16th and early 17th century – the time of Sen no Rikyu, when tea ceremony was in its “golden age.” We got to hold bowls that were made by Hon’ami Koetsu, a 17th-century calligrapher and ceramic artist who was a personal favorite of mine; bowls made by the heads of the Raku family, the originators of Raku ceramics; and real ko-seto (“old Seto”) tea containers, the “standard” style that modern ceramic artists can only imitate.

Here’s a photo of a bowl by Hon’ami Koetsu (at least, they think it is – part of the collection is a book with details on how and where the piece was acquired, followed by page after page of experts commenting/arguing about whether or not they think the piece is genuine):



And here’s a rather dizzying array of ko-seto tea containers, all of them many centuries old:



But I think the highlight of the trip for most of us was the opportunity to handle some real tenmoku bowls. This requires some explanation. Tenmoku is a type of ceramics that originally came from China to Japan; some of those bowls were already centuries old when they were brought to Japan, and they are only used in the most exclusive, formal types of tea ceremony. Even to learn the temae (ceremonies) that use these bowls requires years of prior study, and of course, in practice we only use copies. Even to get a tenmoku bowl that’s really Chinese – not even an old one – is very difficult and expensive.

The bowls that we were looking at were, on average, over a thousand years old, and had been brought to Japan from China. The one in this photo was said to have been used by the shogun Toyotomi Hideyoshi at his famous tea ceremony gathering in Kitano:



This bowl is a style called “nogime” or “hare’s-fur,” because of the fine lines in the pattern of the glaze. The photo doesn’t do justice to the piece; the silvery parts of the glaze are actually iridescent, with a bluish-greenish-purple undertone depending on how you hold it. It’s amazing to think how long ago this bowl was made, and how much it must have gone through to get to this collection.

By the way, you notice that this bowl is a conical shape with a narrow bottom. It’s shaped that way because it’s intended to be placed on a little stand called a dai – in modern tea ceremony, if the bowl is ever taken off the stand, you have to put a piece of brocade cloth underneath it; a tenmoku bowl should never touch the floor.

If you ever have a chance, I can’t recommend a visit to the Freer highly enough. It’s a fantastic experience!

(Kind thanks to Mary Lynn Howard for allowing me to post the photos she took during our trip.)

Clothes Make the Chajin

Last time I talked a little bit about wearing kimonos in general; this time I thought I’d say something about how they affect making tea.

Tea ceremony was designed to be done in kimono, primarily because that was everyday wear for the people who developed it. The arm positions are all done with kimono sleeves in mind; the silk wiping cloth is hung from the obi (the cloth that goes around the waist); the sitting, standing, and walking movements are all kimono-centric.

Wearing a kimono can be tough to get used to. The first time I ever wore one, I basically stood there and tried to stay out of the way while I got dressed like a Barbie doll. The first thing you feel is how restrictive it is around the midsection – if you’re a woman, that is. You have two layers of underwear and a kimono on top of that, and each layer is held closed with at least one tie around the waist, and then you have the obi, which is a long piece of heavy cloth that’s wrapped twice around your body and reinforced with a thin piece of cardboard. It’s not meant to be tight like a corset, but if it’s not snug then things are going to start coming apart. And with all those layers, there’s pretty much no chance of bending at the waist. And because the bottom is wrapped closely around you, you’re limited to fairly small steps.

So the range of movement options that you have in a kimono is pretty limited. You can sit (on a chair or in seiza, kneeling on the floor), you can stand, walk (not run, jump, or take huge steps up or down), move your arms, and lean forward and back.

The consequence of all this is that when you’re wearing a kimono, everything about the way you move changes. You walk in a different way, you handle things in a different way, you sit in a different way. If you’re new to kimonos, probably everything is going to feel a lot more awkward and restricted, and it’ll be a relief to be back in your “normal” clothes again. But I’ve found that wearing a kimono, particularly combined with practicing tea, when I’m thinking about my movements anyhow, changes my mental attitude completely. I do everything more purposefully and carefully, and I tend to focus more on what I’m doing, particularly in the tea room. I’m sure a lot of that is psychological – kimonos, in my brain, equal tea – but I think a lot of it is the kimono, also. By learning to become comfortable within the restrictions, you learn to express yourself more fully through the outlet you have. Not unlike tea ceremony itself!

Tea Life and Kimonos

One of the aspects of Japanese culture that tea practitioners have to make a decision about is the wearing of kimonos. Tea was developed during a time when everyone wore kimonos on a daily basis, and even today, the movements are intended to be done by someone wearing a kimono – everything from the way the sleeves fall to where you place the various items that you carry into the room (like the wiping cloth or fukusa and the papers we use to eat sweets, or kaishi).

Today, particularly for Westerners, the question of whether or not to wear a kimono is a personal one, and in my experience a lot depends on where you study and how your teacher feels about kimonos. If you go to Kyoto to study at the main Urasenke school, you’d be expected to wear a kimono to class every day. At branch schools, like the one at New York, kimonos are optional for lower-level classes and required for higher-level ones. If you’re studying with a private teacher, then your experience may vary.

I was taught that the proper etiquette is to always wear a kimono if you’re teaching a class, and that it’s optional if you’re taking a class (unless it’s one of the high-level classes I mentioned above). However, I know of people who choose to never wear a kimono, even when teaching. Others wear kimonos so often that they feel uncomfortable doing tea at all in Western clothes.

It’s very much a psychological thing. Some people – both Japanese and Westerners – prefer to wear kimonos, either because they like them or because they feel it adds to the tea experience. Some people prefer not to wear them because they’re so formal, or because they’re difficult to put on, or because they can be restrictive. I know a Japanese woman who doesn’t like to wear kimonos because she feels that people associate tea with geishas, and she doesn’t like feeling as if she’s put on display.

To me, kimonos are like formal wear for tea – if it’s a formal occasion, be it a gathering or a special class, or if I’m teaching – I wear a kimono. If it’s a more casual setting, I’ll wear Western clothes. But I can see that there are many different perspectives on kimono, and I respect whatever decision that others make.

In the coming weeks I’ll talk more about life with kimonos, especially as it relates to tea. If you’re interested, please feel free to post questions!

Feeling the Heat

We’ve had a heat wave the past couple of weeks here, and being in an open-air house with no air conditioning, we really feel it when we’re doing tea.

Moving from our old tea house, with central heat and air, where the windows were all covered with screens, to doing tea in a house where we’re in touch with the elements, has really deepened my appreciation for why we do thing the way we do. For example, in the summertime we try to use bowls that are wide and open, which dispel the heat of the water faster and cool off the tea. Another classic example is the fact that the brazier that heats the water is shifted to a position farther away from the guests than in the winter.

But it’s more than that. Doing tea, even in lessons (maybe especially in lessons) requires a lot of concentration, and that’s really hard to maintain in hot weather. We all find ourselves making silly mistakes or forgetting things that under normal circumstances we’d have no trouble remembering.

I think that’s why, in the tea world, summer is considered a good time to do “casual teas” – using more playful, non-traditional items like glass bowls, and avoiding long and formal gatherings. It’s just too hot to be serious right now!

The worst heat of the season is still to come in July and August, and there are all kinds of season things that we can do to suggest coolness – to psych ourselves into not feeling so hot. But I think the real secret of doing tea in this season is to start by accepting our environment the way it is, and rather than complaining about it, to work with what we’ve got.

What's in a Name

Recently myself and another of our tea people, Drew Hanson, received our chameis, or tea names.

It’s hard to exaggerate what a huge moment this is in the life of a tea ceremony practitioner. It’s a bit like a graduation in that it symbolizes the fact that you’ve completed a certain course of study – you’ve worked your way through increasingly difficult levels of tea practice and, more than that, you’ve worked to develop your inner self as well.

In another sense, it’s almost like taking on a new identity. It’s not just the new name itself (which, in times past in Japan, the tea practitioner might actually have used as his everyday name); along with the name, we get permission to wear the Urasenke crest on our kimonos, in the place where (for a Japanese person) the family crest would go. It’s a little bit like being adopted into a very large family.

My tea name is Somon. The first syllable, “So,” is the same for every tea practitioner who gets his or her tea name from Urasenke. It comes from Sen no Rikyu, the founder of the Urasenke lineage (and the lineage of every other major tea school in Japan). His Buddhist name was Soeki, and that was also the name that his friends and associates used when talking to him. We use the “So” from that name in our tea names; it’s difficult to translate, but the same character is often used in words relating a religious sect or teaching.

The second character of a person’s tea name often comes from their given name. For example, the “mon” in my name comes from the “mo” in my given name, Morgan. There are a number of different characters that could be read “mon,” but in my case, the character is the same as “crest,” as in a family crest. My Japanese language teacher says that the name has the feeling of someone who’s a symbol of a spiritual teaching.

Of course, the name is meant to be an inspiration to work harder rather than a description of my current state. Still, it feels like a huge responsibility, especially since I feel like I have so much left to learn. Tea ceremony is an art that you could study for a lifetime and still keep learning, but getting to this point really kind of throws a light on everything that I’ve done, and everything I still have left to do. I feel different, and I think I need to hold on to that feeling so that I can keep trying to get better.