
How are you welcoming in the first day of 2016? Decorated with chrysanthemums, this bowl may have been made for a tea gathering, or chanoyu, to celebrate the New Year. Bowls newly made for New Year’s chanoyu events often were decorated with fragile gold leaf, which wore off in the course of a single use. Artist Nin’ami Dōhachi used a thick white-clay solution to model the relief decoration of chrysanthemum blossoms, a floral motif that is closely associated with autumn through winter.