Brian Lavelle » www.brianlavelle.org

This past weekend in Edinburgh we had probably the most beautiful Spring day so far this year. The sun was so warm and the breeze so slight that it might even have been Summer. Jill and I sat in the Dean Gardens overlooking the Water of Leith—incidentally, where the photograph for my blog header was taken—and speculated on the start of Spring proper.

We thought that the extremes of weather we’ve had for months now were gone; that our extended Winter was over. Needless to say, this morning there were hailstones and rain and it had turned decidedly colder again.

To take my mind off this reversal of meteorological fortunes, I turned to thoughts of the arrival of Shincha. Shincha is the first tea harvest of the year in Japan, starting in the middle of April in Kagoshima, Shizuoka and a few of the other growing regions, and at the beginning of May in Uji in Kyoto.

I’ve ordered a number of packages from a couple of my favourite Japanese tea purveyors, namely:

? Uji Shincha Kirameki, from O-Cha.com;

? Shizuoka Sencha Hatsumi, from O-Cha.com;

? Shincha Traditional, from Hibiki-an;

? Farmers’ Shincha, from Hibiki-an

I’m very much looking forward to the arrival of these packages and am confident this should be enough sencha to keep me going for quite a while. The only temptation will be to try each one separately when it arrives, whereas I should really store some of the four packages to keep them as fresh as possible for as long as possible… We’ll see! In any event, I’ll post my thoughts here as I try each type.

Over the last few months, I’ve become very interested—some might even say obsessed—about obtaining a particular style of Chawan by one of my favourite Japanese potters, Shibuya Deishi (?? ??). His potter’s mark is ?? (Deishi) or ?? (Mingetsu).

The tea bowl in question is one of, or similar to, his Oni-Hagi Winter Tea Bowls with a straw-ash glaze. The Oni–Hagi style is apparently a representation of cherry trees in blossom and Oni is Demon or Devil in Japanese—whilst demons are thought of as wicked or evil in Western culture, they are considered a useful ally in Japan. Here’s an example of one of these extraordinary bowls:

I think this chawan is just beautiful. The glaze is wonderful and the notched feet are perfect. As I said above, it seems I’m obsessed!

I have a few of Deishi’s more inexpensive pieces in the Oni-Hagi style already and they are truly beautiful: rugged and quite sensual but also somehow fragile in aspect, perhaps because the nature of the glaze makes them seem impermanent and on the verge of disintegration; and I love the notion that they change in appearance over time more than most ceramic items. The glaze becomes cracked and crazed and takes on the colour of the tea. The glaze often reminds me of the bark of a tree, particularly something like a silver birch. For me, they make tea-drinking even more enjoyable. Some have even expressed the view that the composition of the clay and glaze changes the taste of the tea, for the better.

Toru, from Artistic Nippon, is trying to see if he can find me one of these, but I fear that the range of bowls similar to the one above might be long gone. Even if I can find me one, I have a feeling it will be expensive… So, watch this space! And any help or further info on Mr. Deishi would be most welcome.