Irabo Chawan

Tradition

Irabo (伊羅保), a Kōrai (高麗) tea bowl

Surface

A dry, sandy surface in a muted biwa (枇杷, loquat) register

Foot

A shrunken, crackled texture near the foot, associated with kairagi (梅華皮)

Dimensions

13.6–13.9 cm × 5.9 cm (5.4 in × 2.3 in), diameter × height

Condition

Excellent — a 2019 work by the artist; no chips or restoration.

Box

Signed kiri-bako (桐箱, paulownia wood box)

Reference

IRA-3M8KP

Irabo (伊羅保) is a kind of Korean tea bowl — in Japanese, a Kōrai (高麗) chawan. The name is often said to come from touch: a rough, sandy surface that feels ira-ira, grained and uneven under the fingers.

Here, that roughness is not a flaw but the point of the work. The surface sits in a muted biwa (枇杷, loquat) register, dry and restrained, the sandy body showing beneath. Near the foot it draws into a shrunken, crackled texture associated with kairagi (梅華皮), one of the prized features of Kōrai chawan.

The form is wide and low — near fourteen centimeters across — so matcha (抹茶) spreads open across the interior. It is a chawan made less for symmetry than for contact: hand, surface, weight, and tea.

Yasumoto Kajihara (梶原靖元, b. 1962) was born in Saga and trained in Karatsu and Kyoto before establishing his own kiln in 1995. His work is rooted in the study of ko-garatsu (古唐津, old Karatsu), the Karatsu wares of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, and in the Korean tea wares that shaped the tea culture around them.

He is known for rebuilding early wares from the material up — making clay from sandstone, working with local plant and mineral materials, and studying old kiln sites in Japan and Korea. His work is shown at galleries including Kuroda Tōen in Tokyo.

Rinse with warm water and dry on a soft cloth. Avoid soap, dishwasher, and prolonged soaking. Because the surface is grained and partly crackled, let the chawan dry fully, unstacked, before it is put away.

With use, the tone may slowly deepen where water, matcha, and the hand return. Let it change at its own pace.

Full care notes — use, cleaning, storage, and aging — are in Living with a chawan.

Each chawan is shipped insured and tracked from Tokyo in ceramic-safe double-boxed packaging, within two business days of payment.

If the piece arrives damaged, we arrange a full refund. All duties and import taxes are included in the price — nothing is charged on delivery (DDP).

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