Matcha bowl / "Unkin" Kutani-yaki

Kutani-yaki matcha bowl with maple leaf and cherry blossom pattern made by Yasokichi Tokuda IV (1961-), a female ceramic artist in Komatsu, Ishikawa Prefecture.

The traditional "Unkin" pattern is composed of cherry blossoms to represent clouds and maple leaves to represent brocade. It is a metaphorical expression, specific to the Japanese: it comes from a sentence mentioned in a collection of waka (a genre of Japanese poetry) Kokin Wakashu (the poetic monument of the Heian period)
In the autumn twilight, the maple leaves along the Tatsuta River looked, to the emperor's eyes, like a piece of Japanese brocade; in the spring morning, the cherry blossoms in Yoshino, from Hitomaro's spirit, were seen as a flock of clouds.