Teabowl with standing crane design

This type of bowl, known in Japanese as a gohon tachizuru chawan (“model teabowl with standing crane”), is a reproduction of a famous teabowl presented by the third Tokugawa shogun Iemitsu (1604–1651) to the warlord Hosokawa Sansai in 1639, in celebration of the latter’s seventy-seventh birthday. The tall, slim shape of the original bowl was designed by the tea master Kobori Enshu (1579–1647), with a celebratory crane motif purportedly sketched by Shogun Iemitsu himself. The bowl was made to order by Korean potters in Pusan. Korean potters continued to produce variants of this bowl for Japanese tea practitioners and collectors until 1718; thereafter, such bowls were produced in Japanese kilns such as Hagi.