Dawan (Korean tea bowl)
A wide, thick-walled Korean bowl for drinking tea, in stoneware with a loose ash or slip glaze and an exposed foot. Its relationship to the Japanese chawan is the useful fact: many of the bowls most valued in chanoyu are Korean-made vessels, and Korean and Japanese bowls are neither the same object nor unrelated ones.
Identity
- Category
- Drinking vessel
- Native name
- 다완
- Romanised
- dawan, tawan
- Also called
- Korean tea bowl, ido bowl
- Material
- Stoneware under an ash, slip or feldspathic glaze, typically with an unglazed foot
- Typical capacity
- 250–500 ml
- Skill level
- Beginner
Porosity
Not porous. It contributes nothing of its own to the liquor, so it can be moved between teas freely and washed with detergent without consequence.
Glazed interiors are effectively inert. Where the glaze is thin, crazed or absent in patches, the body takes up liquid in the same way Hagi ware does, and such a bowl should be dried thoroughly rather than stored damp.
Where it comes from
Korean. The bowls that entered Japanese tea practice were in many cases everyday Korean ware reassessed in a different context, which is a documented movement of objects between traditions rather than a shared origin — TeaHQ names both sides rather than absorbing one into the other.
Named here rather than presented as generic equipment. The object belongs to a practice, and TeaHQ describes it from the outside.
If you do not own one
Any wide shallow bowl, as for a chawan. The width is the functional part.
This one is not marked essential. The tea can be made without it.
Brewing methods it is used for
- Korean green tea brewing — A low-temperature approach to Korean green tea in which the water is cooled through a separate open vessel before it ever meets the leaf, and the pot is emptied entirely into the cups each time. Darye names the etiquette; the brewing approach below is shared by everyday practice outside any formal setting.
- Whisking (bowl-prepared powdered tea) — Powdered leaf suspended in water rather than steeped and strained — the only common preparation in which the leaf itself is consumed rather than discarded.
Tea types it suits
Care and maintenance
Dry the unglazed foot before stacking. Thick low-fired bodies tolerate hot water but not sudden cold, so do not rinse a hot bowl under a cold tap.
Other drinking vessels
Sources
This page is TeaHQ synthesis. No external source stands behind the description, the material or the account of how the object is cared for. Where the record names a tradition, that attribution is TeaHQ’s own reading of common practice rather than a citation.
TeaHQ names no maker, brand or shop and has nothing to sell. Nothing on this page should be read as advice to buy the object — the substitute note above exists because owning it is usually optional.