Tea-leaf storage jar, named Chigusa, China, Southern Song or Yuan dynasty, 13th–14th century. Stoneware with iron glaze, height 41.6 cm. Freer Gallery of Art Purchase
Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery
The Smithsonian Museums of Asian Art
The Story of Chigusa: A Japanese Tea Jar's 700-Year History
Saturday 27 August, 9, 10:30 PM Eastern Daylight Time (EDT)Sunday 28 August, 10, 11:30 AM Japan Time (JST)
The Smithsonian's Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery invite you to participate in a free online workshop, rescheduled from its original March date.
What can a single jar tell us about how objects acquired history and meaning within Japanese tea culture? When the Freer Gallery of Art recently acquired a tea-leaf storage jar named Chigusa, the museum became yet another participant in a seven-century-long story, in which a Chinese jar came to Japan and was transformed into a famous and much-admired container for tea leaves, even acquiring a personal name. Tea masters' diaries and connoisseurs' handbooks described and ranked the jar; successive owners endowed it with Chinese brocades, silk cords, inscriptions, documents, and multiple boxes. Chigusa has been described as a "time capsule"-an embodiment of the fascinating and complex process by which tea-related objects accrued meaning and value. Only a few hundred such jars with comparable pedigrees survive in Japan, and few are as extensively documented.
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