Chado: The Way of Tea opened in the College of East Asian Studies Gallery at Mansfield Freeman Center on Sept. 12. The exhibit explores the prominent role and significance of the tea ceremony as an art and spiritual practice in China and Japan.
Objects on display have been selected from the College of East Asian Studies collection and loaned by tea enthusiasts in the Wesleyan community. Several media are represented, including ceramics, lacquerware, bamboo, wood, iron, textiles, and calligraphy. Pictured is a tea caddy (natsume and chaire), tea scoops (chashaku) and iron kettles (tetsubin) used to boil water for a Japanese tea ceremony.Exhibit curator Stephen Morrell spoke during the exhibit’s opening.Several photographs by National Geographic photographer Michael Yamashita ’71 are featured in the exhibit.Yamashita photographed the Xishuangbanna tea plantations in the Yunnan Province in southwestern China.Included in the exhibit is a silk Tsukesage Tsujigahana–style kimono, which is dyed and painted. The kimono is suitable to wear at formal occasions such as weddings and tea ceremonies.A gallery-goer examines a Chinese bamboo tea caddy, six tea samples, seminal figures in the history of tea in China and Japan, and a plantation worker’s hat that was collected in China in 1883.Chado: The Way of Tea is supported by a grant from the Freeman Foundation. (Photos by Chloe de Montgolfier ’22)
Olivia Drake
James Sims
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