Seattle Art Museum's New Japanese Teahouse Imparts The Beauty And Serenity Of A Revered Ritual -- The Way Of Tea

A formal Japanese tea ceremony will be one of the experiences available at the Seattle Art Museum beginning Feb. 8. For the space of an hour, visitors can become part of the tranquil ritual that has shaped Japan's sense of beauty for the last several centuries.

SAM's principal Japanese treasures, including the "100 Crows" folding gold screen and the sublime 17th-century "Deer Scroll," will be prominently on view when SAM throws open its new Asian galleries Friday. But the star attraction will be the teahouse.

"We wanted a symbolic entry point to Japanese art," says William Rathbun, SAM's curator of Asian art. "The tea ceremony provides it on several levels. For the past 400 years, since the death of tea master Sen Rikyu in 1591, the aesthetics of the tea ceremony have had a profound effect on Japanese ceramics, metalwork, painting, calligraphy and flower arrangement."

The Japanese name for it is Chado, The Way of Tea. Introduced to Japan from China by a 12th-century Zen Buddhist monk, the Way of Tea retains a Zen appreciation of austerity, impermanence and the beauty of things as fleeting as dew.

The beauty of the simple and the natural that it teaches are visible in the crusty white glaze of a tea bowl, or the section of bamboo that holds a seasonal flower. But the near-rustic simplicity espoused by tea masters is something akin to Marie Antoinette taking her ladies-in-waiting out to the country to play at being milkmaids.

A supremely refined connoisseurship underlies Chado, one that takes into account the most minute details of placement and timing, and strives to make it all flow as if it were a spontaneous act of nature. It is a master potter creating a form that evokes a moss-covered rock.

SAM's teahouse is a gift from the Urasenke Foundation, an offshoot of the Urasenke School of Chado, whose tea masters are descended from the famous Sen Rikyu, who shaped the ceremony as it exists today. With 3 million followers in Japan, Urasenke is the largest of some 30 schools of Chado in Japan, and the only one that is "internationally minded."

The foundation has sponsored the construction of teahouses in cities as far-flung as Munich and Lima. It recently contributed to the construction of a teahouse in the British Museum in London, and in 1972 was among the donors whose money allowed the teahouse in the Seattle Arboretum to be rebuilt after it was destroyed by fire. Urasenke's gift was made on the condition that the Arboretum teahouse, formerly a purely decorative structure, be built as a usable teahouse.

Why do they do it?

"Peace through a bowl of tea," says Patt Pope of Urasenke's Seattle branch, quoting one of the school's grand masters.

"It is Urasenke's hope that disseminating the Way of Tea throughout the world will help further an awareness of the needs of other people. One of the most important factors in performing the tea ceremony is consideration of others; serving guests to the fullest of one's ability in a way that is not expensive, but heartfelt."

Pope explains that the tea ceremony is also a meditative activity, in keeping with the Zen aim of self-realization and enlightenment through action and self-discipline. "The discipline of the Chado focuses on the simple, everyday act of preparing and serving tea, and receiving it with gratitude on the guest's side," says Pope. The decorative scroll, the flower arrangement, the utensils and dishes, all are selected to enhance awareness and appreciation of the season, and its changing character.

And all of those have helped form the mind-set of Japanese artists. The teahouse at SAM provides a context for art objects associated with the tea aesthetic.

SAM's teahouse, which does not yet have a formal name, was designed and built at Urasenke headquarters in Kyoto, then disassembled for shipment to Seattle. Four Japanese carpenters traveled here, living in Capitol Hill apartments for three weeks, trying to master the mysteries of English enough to shop at the supermarket and catch the right bus to the museum every day, to assemble the teahouse inside the gallery.

To the consternation of SAM officials, the teahouse was bigger than it appeared on the plans. It projected into the doorway of the gallery. Horrors!

Dreading what chief architect Robert Venturi would say, supervising architect Walter Schacht ordered the doorway narrowed.

Venturi arrived when the job was done, took it in at a glance, and was all smiles. "I love it! It's so perfectly over scale."

That's vintage Venturi.

The teahouse is not a place you can tour through. No one will enter it except to perform the tea ceremony.

Ceremonies at SAM will be those the Japanese call Chakai, or "thin tea." A sweet will be served, and each guest will be offered tea made with a scoop of slightly bitter powdered green tea whisked to a chartreuse froth.

Guests for tea ceremonies at SAM will sit on stools, and keep their shoes on, rather than removing them and being seated on the floor, as is customary in Japan.

Although SAM's teahouse will be in regular use beginning Feb. 8, it will not be christened with an official name until it is formally dedicated April 3. A full program of related lectures, classes and concerts of Japanese music will be scheduled around that April date. Stay tuned for the schedule, or call SAM's information line, 654-3100.