The Freer Celebrates 100 Years of The Book of Tea

As part of a year-long series of exhibitions and programa celebrating the centenary of Charles Lang Freer's gift of his collection of Asian art to the nation, a new exhibition, Freer and Tea: 100 Years of The Book of Tea, takes a fresh look at Mr. Freer's collection of Japanese, Korean, and Chinese ceramics associated with the tea ceremony. This select group of a dozen or so objects represents only a small part of the more than 350 ceramics Freer had amassed by 1906.

In 1906, the same year that Freer gave his gift to the nation, Japanese art historian Okakura Kakuzo published 'The Book of Tea,' the first study in English to explain the philosophical and aesthetic background of the tea ceremony. The book, continuously in print since it first appeared, remains a classic. Okakura, a curator at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, set out to create a text that would explain Japanese and to a larger extent Asian culture to the West. Okakura explained that tea is much more than a drink; it is a way of life.