A traditional Japanese tea bowl used in the tea ceremony, typically hand-thrown pottery with an irregular, natural appearance.
From Japanese 'chawan' (茶碗), where 'cha' means tea and 'wan' means bowl. The term entered English in the late 19th-early 20th centuries as Japanese art and culture became fashionable in the West, particularly through exhibitions and the aesthetics of Japonisme.
The chawan embodies Zen Buddhism's wabi-sabi aesthetic—imperfection is beauty—so Japanese tea masters specifically sought asymmetrical, hand-made bowls that Western perfectionism would have rejected, and now they're prized worldwide, flipping our definition of what makes something valuable.
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