Summer Tearoom

A second composition on the summer tearoom subject, this print revisits the chashitsu from a shifted vantage or with different appointments — perhaps a closer view of the tokonoma scroll niche, the kettle on its sunken hearth (ro), or the framed view through an open shoji onto a roji garden. Stewart's mokuhanga practice favors restrained palettes built from successive registrations of grey, ochre, and ink, with bokashi gradations carrying the burden of atmosphere. In summer, the tea room is conventionally dressed for coolness: bamboo blinds replace paper screens, and water imagery enters through utensils and the chabana flower. By producing two variants of the same subject, Stewart works in the manner of an artist returning to a motif under changing light, much as Hiroshi Yoshida did with his shōnen-shū sets. The repetition records small architectural particulars — the pitch of a ceiling, the pattern of a transom — that distinguish one Kyoto tearoom from another, and that Stewart has spent decades observing from inside Japanese visual culture.