Seminar in Japanese Art and Archaeology: Japanese Tea and the Visual Arts

The seminar examines the diverse arts employed in pre-modern chanoyu, the Japanese secular ritual of tea, including ceramics, paintings, lacquer, calligraphy, and architecture. Special attention is given to period texts written about tea objects. Among the topics considered are the physical and conceptual adaptations of objects (both indigenous and non-Japanese) for the tea context, the aesthetic terms tea practitioners created for chanoyu objects, the practice of bestowing names on objects, and the ensemble use of objects of different mediums. Seminar members may also, if they wish, study objects outside Japanese tea as comparative examples.