The Tea Master is a Curator
If you look at any art or design piece, it is rarely the result of one person’s work, but of multiple talents. The creative world is becoming so complex and technical that nowadays, you need to gather talents and work as a collective team.
This is where a curator becomes very important in curating all the different elements and harmonize the different talent. Like a curator of a museum who creates by leveraging the talents of the diverse creators, the idea of a curator in the creative process becomes more and more usual.
Contrary to our image of the traditional and old style art, the tea master used to play this role of curator back in the age.
Similarly to the complex elements that constitute current art and design project, the tea master needed to deal with differents form of arts such as garden, architecture, painting, calligraphy, incense, flowers, sound, bowl, food, cloth, confectionery and ritual in order to create the supreme experience. Each of those element require a high understanding of the art, which makes it necessary to have the specialist for each of those field.
The tea master curates the vision of the space and experience he or she would like to provide to his guest, and through the co-creation with the architect, the ceramic craftsman, the confectionery artist, the gardener and many more, brings the vision to reality.
And similar to a curator in the museum, the tea master explains the history, background knowledge behind a certain piece and the philosophy in order to invite and navigate the guests through the experience.
This role as the curator is one thing that we try to reimagine at The TEA-ROOM. How would a space and event be curated or a product designed if it was in the hand of a tea master.
TEA FUTURES is delivered by the art collective “The TEA-ROOM” with the aim to rethink the 400 years old tradition, just as Sen-No-Rikyu did 400 years ago.
Text by Jun Kamei
