Collection Spotlight: June, 2025

Sano Gofu and Shofuan

Celebrating Sano Gofu:
50th Anniversary of the Tea Hut

On display in the museum’s Founders Room

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Museum co-founders, Carl and Edith Weyerhaeuser made friends with many of the consultants who guided them in amassing over 8,000 objects that make up the Art Complex Museum collection.

Kojiro Tomita, Curator of Asian Arts for the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, was among the first advisors the Weyerhaeusers got to know. Tomita helped to guide their selections of Asian arts and ceramics. When Carl and Edith visited Japan in 1966, they became enamored with the tea ceremony and its cultural significance. Edith Weyerhaeuser was especially intrigued with the tea ceremony’s meditative quality and intention for practitioners to balance the hectic pace of life, and thought it should “find its way to America.” Carl was interested in the tea hut given his appreciation for the natural materials from which it was constructed, especially wood. Tomita then introduced the Weyerhaeusers to his childhood friend, artist and designer Sano Gofu.

Gofu designed the museum’s tea hut and named it Wind in the Pines (Sho-fuan). From its conception, the tea hut was designed to give museum visitors a first-hand experience of an authentic tea ceremony (Chado). The hope was that visitors would gain an understanding of its importance to Japanese culture. Gofu modified the traditional tea hut design with an open front, for the purpose of public demonstrations.

The tea hut was fabricated under the supervision of Shimotsuma Toyokitchi, director of Kyo Trading in Kyoto, Japan; by Seiwa Architectural Firm; and architect Araki. The fabricators provided detailed photos and plans for the installation of the tea hut in America. Initially, it was meant to be housed in the museum, but as the tea hut was designed and constructed, the idea proved impractical. It was then that a design for a superstructure on the museum grounds, surrounded by a Japanese garden, began to unfold. A garden seemed a more suitable location for the tea hut, with ample room for an audience to tea demonstrations.

Yasuhiro Iguchi, chief conservator of Asiatic art at the MFA Boston, supervised the installation of the tea hut on the museum grounds in 1975. Margaret Connors, a landscape architect from Duxbury, designed the surrounding garden in 1981.

Shofuan is enjoyed every summer as the museum hosts a series of tea ceremonies performed by members of the Urasenke Society of Boston, Massachusetts.

As an artist, Gofu created numerous watercolors of botanicals and locations in Japan, as well as painted fans, scrolls, and screens. Through the years, many of the artist’s works were given to the museum co-founders, Carl and Edith Weyerhaeuser, and the Art Complex Museum.

The exhibit, Celebrating Sano Gofu: 50th Anniversary of the Tea Hut, displays some of Gofu’s paintings, as well as sketches and architectural plans for the tea hut.

The exhibit includes about half of the paintings in the museum’s collection, as well as photographs and drawings of the tea hut that demonstrate Gofu’s design process. A student of the famous nihonga painter Seihō Takeuchi, Gofu graduated from the Kyōto Municipal Arts and Crafts College and became a sumie painter. At present, there are more than 70 objects by the artist in the Art Complex Museum Collection. A screen that Gofu created can be viewed in the Founders Room.

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