Minneapolis Institute of Art

Promulgation of the Contemporary Tea Ceremony, vol. 3–4

Endō Genkan

Date

1694

Medium

Woodblock printed book, ink and color on paper

Department

Asian Art

Institution

Minneapolis Institute of Art

Contemporary guide to tea ceremony, Enshū school. In the mid-1600s, an aristocrat named Kobori Enshū (1579–1647), who was also a skilled poet, artist, flower arranger, and tea master, developed his own style of the tea ceremony based on the aesthetic ideal of kirei-sabi , which combined the notions of refined beauty ( kirei ) and patina, the wear associated with age ( sabi ). Enshū’s kirei-sabi style, which partially supplanted wabi (imperfect or rustic) as the dominant aesthetic, had a great impact on the design of gardens and teahouses, decoration of teahouse interiors, and the production of tea wares in the mid-1600s. Two generations later, Endō Genkan, an adherent of the Enshū School of tea, wrote a number of important books on the Japanese tea ceremony including the volumes displayed here, which sought to disseminate Enshū’s kirei-sabi tea aesthetic. Asia

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