Serendipity

I had one day left in New York after the Friends in Tea conference. Roger had given a couple of us a ride as far as a train station near his house and we took the train into Manhattan. We checked into an inexpensive but nice hotel on the upper west side and had a fabulous Indian dinner before retiring.

The next day we went to Minamoto Kitchoan and I bought sweets to take home to my students. A friend was going to meet us for lunch, but on Monday many places are just not open for business. We were hot and tired and I was rather irritated. We wandered around for a time and found a small boutique shop with interesting interior décor. We asked if they knew of a place that sold Japanese antiques, and the sales clerk said that the gallery upstairs had some contemporary ceramics, but didn’t know if they were open.

We took the elevator up to the fourth floor and there it was. The tea room described in the Wall Street Journal Article was right there to the left. We invited ourselves in and Mr. Yoshi Munemura was gracious enough to show us the room, serve us some tea and talk about tea, tea utensils and the Yanagi Gallery

We took the elevator up to the fourth floor and there it was. The tea room described in the Wall Street Journal Article was right there to the left. We invited ourselves in and Mr. Yoshi Munemura was gracious enough to show us the room, serve us some tea and talk about tea, tea utensils and the Yanagi Gallery. The tea room itself was an 8 mat room with a host entrance and tokonoma on two sides for display. There was a temaeza set up with Japanese contemporary ceramics, a furokama, tea bowl, chaire, and mizusashi.


Then along the guest side was a footwell that you could put your feet into, and beyond that was a half tatami mat cut lengthwise so you could sit on it with your feet in the well.


We were lucky to have seen it, according to Mr. Munemura, because the tea room will be taken down for the next exhibition this fall. I love it when things like this happen.