The Tea Ceremony

In later texts, tea drinking patterns are divided into three, and named after the three types of calligraphy: block (shin), cursive (gyo) and grass (so). This triple division stems from Furuta Oribe who propagated what he called Ôunconventional teaÕ.
Rikyu and before him Juko and Joo had practised both formal and relaxed tea, and these two manners came to be known as block and cursive. Grass is even more relaxed. Oribe was the chief pupil of Rikyu, who had lived in time of savage war, and had to be practical and clever. Twenty years younger that Rikyu, Oribe lived in a different epoch. He espoused a sense of personal revelation and openness quite unlike the strictness of his teacherÕs manner. This unconventional manner came to the fore when Rikyu was dead and Oribe in his late forties.
The best extant Oribe teahuts are the En-an, the Sarumen (Ômonkey-faceÕ) teahut and Oribe Hall in Nagoya Castle, the Happo-an (Ôeight windowed hut) now in the Nara National Museum, and the Ko-an (Ôhut of the bamboo groveÕ) in the Sangen-in of the Daitoku-ji. They are all larger than the tiny huts Rikyu advocated. They also have so-called ÔOribe windowsÕ making them lighter. Rikyu expelled outside views, making tea drinkers concentrate on the inside beauty, but Oribe encouraged looking out into the garden.
Oribe was also interested in imported European (nanban) things. He was a polymath and an impressario, whose influence on the arts of the Momoyama Period was enormous. Oribe ware is an example of this.

Note: block/cursive/grass
Traditionally, in calligraphy, block writing is the most formal and has the highest status. At the opposite end are the flowing strokes of grass writing. Cursive comes somewhere in the middle. On the Continent, block was thought of as orthodox and proper, with the other two in diminishing order of importance. But under the order of Japanese aesthetics, all three taken as equal, or if anything, grass was given pride of place. The hierarchy was reversed. Wabi loves the idea of an incomplete beauty, and grass fits best wish it.