Height: 10.3 cm, Mouth Diameter: 9.8 cm, Foot Diameter: 5.8 cm
Raku Museum
On the front of the inner box lid, Jushin-sai has written “Raku Sa-nyu-cho”; on the underside of the lid, he has written ‘Hi’ (a signature seal). It appears that the words “Nihyaku-no-uchi” were originally written in the upper right corner of the lid, but for some reason, they have been erased.
Sa-iri took tonsure in the 13th year of the Kyōhō era (1728), at the age of 44, and adopted the name “Sa-iri” after receiving the character “Sa” from Kakukaku-sai Sōsa. However, two years later, Kakukaku-sai Genso passed away, and the Fushin-an school passed into the hands of Jushin-sai. This explains why the majority of Sairyu’s tea bowls from after his tonsure bear Jushinsai’s inscriptions. Among these, the so-called “Sairyu 200” tea bowls—marked “Within the 200” on the lid of their boxes—are quintessential examples of Sairyu’s tea bowls with Jushinsai’s inscriptions, and it can be said that each one demonstrates the full range of Sairyu’s technical mastery in his later years.
The “200” tea bowls may have been fired when Jushinsai was fifty years old, in reference to So’nyu’s “Kimi” tea bowl from when he was fifty, or they may have been made to mark the 150th anniversary of the death of the founder, Chojiro, in the third year of Genbun. Furthermore, since the inscription was made when Jushinsai was thirty or thirty-four years old, the calligraphy is decidedly youthful.
The design evokes the style of a Seto-kuro cylindrical tea bowl and also bears a resemblance to Kōetsu tea bowls. It is cylindrical with a sharply defined ridge at the waist and tapers slightly toward the rim. The large foot is low, with a wide base, and the hollowed-out section inside the foot is an irregular circle, topped with a low, swirling hood. The interior features a tea pool and a series of ridges running around the inside. It is fully glazed, with a glossy black glaze—slightly mottled—covering the entire surface. Perhaps due to the thick construction of the base, it feels heavy in the hand, and three marks remain on the footring.
