This Black Raku tea bowl exemplifies the later work of Raku Ichinyū IV. The eldest son of Raku Dōnyū III, Ichinyū initially worked in a freer manner influenced by his father, producing comparatively large, thinly built vessels. Later in his career, however, his tea bowls became smaller and more compact, moving toward the restrained forms associated with Chōjirō, founder of the Raku tradition, and the wabi aesthetic central to chanoyu.
The bowl’s simple, half-cylindrical form is largely unmodulated, allowing the surface and subtle irregularities of its hand-shaped construction to assume greater prominence. It is covered in shugusuri, a distinctive glaze developed by Ichinyū in which areas of red emerge through a muted black surface. Here, reddish-brown mottling appears sparingly across the granular, orange-peel-like texture of the black glaze, creating variation without disrupting the bowl’s quiet character. Fired in a Black Raku kiln, the work combines material richness with formal restraint and is characteristic of Ichinyū’s mature return to the aesthetic principles established by Chōjirō.
