Rikyu found _raku_ bowls perfect for the tea ceremony; they were austere, powerful, seemingly wrenched from melted rock. In shape they were broad-based with gently rounded, one might almost say organically rounded, sides leading to an undulating lip, wrapping in slightly over the tea, thereby holding the heat and preventing drips. Not only were they light and porous, allowing for minimal heat conduction and comfortable handling, their center of gravity was so low they were almost impossible to tip over, permitting easy whisking of the powdered tea as they rested on the _tatami_-matted floor of the tea room. (It should be noted that special bowls for summer usage de-emphasized certain of these characteristics: they were thinner-walled and shallower, since the object in hot months was to dissipate heat rather than conserve it.) But the most appealing qualities of the _raku _were its sculptural sense of natural plastic form and its soft, bubbly, almost liquid glaze, which virtually invites one to hold it in his lips. Also, the colors of the glazes just happen to contrast beautifully with the pale sea-green of the powdered tea. This was the end of the search for the perfect Zen tea bowl, and Hideyoshi was so pleased with Chojiro's handiwork that he gave the potter's family a seal bearing the word that would give the form its name: _raku_, meaning pleasure or comfort. Chojiro's descendants became the _raku _dynasty, as generation after generation they set the standards for others to follow. Hideyoshi's act of official recognition meant that Japanese potters were no longer merely craftsmen, but fully accredited artists. In later years, Japanese ceramics became distinguished in many areas--from the traditional wares produced at a multiplicity of local kilns to a vast new nationwide porcelain industry producing decorative works for both export and home consumption. Tea-ceremony vessels were created in great profusion as well, but, unfortunately, genuine art cannot be mass- produced. By the eighteenth century, the great age of Zen ceramic art was over, never to be recovered. Today the early wares of the Zen Momoyama artists command their weight in gold, perhaps platinum. This is the great irony of the _wabi _tea vessels, if not of all Zen culture. Tea bowls, the major expression of Zen art, seem at once both primitive and strikingly modern. To begin to understand this contradiction we must go back to our own nineteenth century in the West, when tastes ran to decoration for its own sake and the rule of perfect, symmetrical, polished form was the aesthetic ideal. Into this smug, serene sea of aesthetic sureties, which in some ways reached back to the ancient Greeks, the English critic John Ruskin threw a boulder when he wrote: