Matcha bowl / Kyo-yaki "Unkin"

Kyo-yaki matcha bowl with maple leaf and cherry blossom motif made by Tanyu Hayashi (1945-) in the Gozan kiln in Kyoto.

The traditional “Unkin” pattern is composed of cherry blossoms to represent clouds and maple leaves to represent brocade. This 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.