Too Beautiful to Use? When a Tea Bowl Becomes Art with Julius

A tea bowl can sell for more than £10,000, but if you owned one, would you actually dare to drink from it? Originally made as an everyday object, a tea bowl can become a work of art displayed behind glass because of its age, craftsmanship, maker and market value. When an object becomes too precious to use, is it a successful work of art or a tea bowl that has lost its purpose? In this episode, we explore Japanese tea bowls through the aesthetics of wabi-sabi, kintsugi and imperfection. Can something deliberately made to look irregular still feel natural? Can a golden repair make an ordinary bowl more valuable? And when an aesthetic rooted in simplicity and restraint becomes a luxury lifestyle, are we buying the object itself, the artist’s name or a carefully constructed idea of authenticity? Ultimately, we return to one simple question: if you owned an expensive tea bowl, would you keep it safely in a display case or would you actually use it to drink tea? -- Hosting provided by SoundOn