It is June and we are already in the throes of Summer here at my home in the Hudson Valley. Outside in my garden, seeds planted in Spring have germinated and young green sprouts have already pushed up through the earth, their great first flags of leaves unfurled. Skies, when not choked with the BBC smoke of the recent wildfires, are a pale blue. Clouds billow like great sailing ships, occasionally pealing thunder and offering rain as a cool respite to the growing heat.

Inside my tea space, change for the season began a month ago, evinced by the appearance of a particular tea object: a hollowed bronze tripod, atop which sits an old iron kettle. The 風炉 furo (lit. “wind furnace”) marks its arrival with the coming of Summer in the old lunisolar calendar of East Asia and the constant seasonal shifts found in the Japanese tea practice of 茶の湯 chanoyu. Here in the Hudson Valley, this shift coincides with the blooming of irises in my garden, wild mountain laurel in the hills that surround my home, the birth of a new generation of songbirds.

By Scott Norton

Summer Arrives and Wind Furnace Appears

Photo @ Scott Norton

When compared to the open mouth of the sunken hearth (the 炉 ro) of Winter, the furo conveys a sense of airiness in the tea space, being smaller in shape and size, and its design meant to shield both host and guest from the heat of the ash and glowing coals it contains. While they come in a variety of shapes and styles, mine, a 朝鮮風炉 Chōsen-buro, is more ancient in form, resembling an old incense burner from Korea, from which it receives its name. In truth, the form, a tripod vessel, is even older, dating as far back as the 商 Shāng dynasty (2nd millennium BCE), where they were used in rituals ranging from alchemy to state ceremony.

The tripod cauldron would evolve as a tea implement during the 唐 Táng dynasty (618-907), famously when it was adopted and adapted by tea practitioner 陸羽 Lù Yǔ (733 - 803). In his 茶經 Chá Jīng, "The Classic of Tea" (760 - 762), he describes a three-legged 風爐 fēng lú (“wind furnace”), inspired by the ancient 鼎 dǐng cooking vessel. He detailed that it has three legs, each with an engraving of seven characters. One leg bore an inscription with three of the elements of the 八卦 bāguà. Inside, the 墆嵲 zhì niè, a clay urn that held the charcoal inside the fēng lú, contained perforations in the shape of three trigrams representing fire, water, and wind.

More than just a highly refined piece of technology crafted to heat water for tea, Lù Yǔ’s fēng lú was an implement of alchemy, an object used to transform water, which was unsafe to consume in its natural form, into a component that would become part of a tea and salt concoction meant to preserve one’s health and prolong one’s life. Even to this day, in the practice of chanoyu, one inscribes the trigram for water (“☵”) into the ash held inside the furo to ensure that there is an adequate balance between all five elements present: wood (charcoal) that fuels, fire that burns, earth that holds (historically the brazier would have been made of clay), metal that contains (the kettle being made of iron), and water that boils to make tea. 

As I sit to make a bowl of 抹茶 matcha, as Summer’s heat grows more each day, I cannot help but to appreciate the depth of history and thoughtfulness of fellow tea practitioners over the ages that went into creating this beautiful piece of tea technology that rests before me. The sound of the boiling water rises, first from a gentle bubbling, then a rolling boil, and, then, finally, to a quiet constant hiss. In the poetry that surrounds tea, this particular sound, the sound when water is ready to be used for tea, is called 松風 matsukaze. “Wind in the pines”. A thought so refreshing it cools even the mind on a hot Summer’s day.