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a LOD of TEA Project

Tea is...

Our Project

This project explores how digital technologies such as Linked Open Data and metadata modeling can be used to preserve and interpret cultural knowledge.

Our focus is the Japanese Tea Ceremony (茶道 / sadō / chanoyu) — a centuries-old tradition that embodies harmony, respect, purity, and tranquility.

This is a linked open data project that aims to create a comprehensive representation.

The Japanese Tea Ceremony (茶道 / sadō / chanoyu)

The Japanese Tea Ceremony (茶道 / sadō/ chanoyu) is a traditional cultural practice that embodies the spirit of harmony, respect, purity, and tranquility. Rooted in centuries of refinement, this ritual is more than the act of drinking tea — it is a philosophical and aesthetic experience shaped by Zen Buddhism.

Influenced deeply by the teachings of Sen no Rikyū, one of the most iconic tea masters of the 16th century, the ceremony emphasizes simplicity and the subtle beauty found in imperfection, a concept known as wabi-sabi. Every element of the practice — from the utensils to the setting — reflects this aesthetic.

Western audiences were first introduced to these ideas through The Book of Tea, a 1906 essay by Okakura Kakuzō, which presents the tea ceremony as a bridge between art, nature, and spiritual reflection. Through this project, we aim to connect the heritage of the Tea Ceremony with the digital age, using Linked Open Data to trace its cultural, historical, and philosophical dimensions.

Items

This selection of cultural heritage items explores the world of the Japanese Tea Ceremony, from a tea bowl used in ritual practice to a portrait of Sen no Rikyū and the influential Book of Tea. Each object reveals a different aspect of sadō’s philosophy, aesthetics, and history.

The Book of Tea

A classic text by Okakura Kakuzō that introduced the philosophy and aesthetics of the Japanese tea ceremony to the Western world. It emphasizes the spirit of harmony, respect, purity, and tranquility.

Portrait of Sen no Rikyu

This portrait honors Sen no Rikyū, the legendary tea master who formalized the principles of wabi-cha and shaped the tea ceremony as a spiritual practice.

Woodblock Print of Samurais

Kabuki actors as samurais takes part in a tea ceremony, highlighting how sadō transcended social classes. Even samurai would remove their armor to enter this space of calm, reflection, and refined etiquette.

Invitation to a Tea Ceremony

This delicate print depicts a traditional invitation to a tea gathering, reflecting the ritualized and respectful nature of sadō.

Teabowl

A rustic tea bowl used in chanoyu, featuring kintsugi—a gold repair technique that embraces flaws as part of the bowl’s history, reflecting the spirit of wabi-sabi.

Kimono

A lightweight, unlined kimono worn in summer tea gatherings, showcasing seasonal awareness and refined textile aesthetics.

Mysterious Japan

A photograph from Mysterious Japan captures the serene ambiance of a traditional tea garden, designed to guide guests into a meditative mindset.

The Japanese Footbridge

Claude Monet’s Water Lilies series, deeply inspired by Japanese gardens, reflects the tranquil beauty also found in tea gardens. This bridge, featured in one of his iconic paintings, captures the same serene aesthetic later echoed on the cover of The Book of Tea.

Ikebana Hinagata Densho

An early illustrated guide to ikebana, the art of flower arrangement, which often complements the tea ceremony setting.

Teascoop of Rikyu

A bamboo tea scoop traditionally attributed to Sen no Rikyū, representing simplicity and spiritual depth in tea utensils.

Metadata Analysis

We started our analysis by investigating the standards of metadata across the institutions that hold the selected items. Europeana provides standardized metadata using the EDM model. While The Met offers metadata via an API, they do not follow a specific standard, leading us to adopt CDWA for describition. We mapped it to the CIDOC-CRM when developing our ontology. For books and archival materials, metadata was available in MARCXML format, which we vocabularized with MODS descriptions. We translated this into BIBFRAME for our ontology and to support RDF generation. The table below summarizes the metadata standards used for description by each institution, as well as the standards we decided to adopt.

Item	Item Type	Institution	Metadata Standard Provided by the Institution	Chosen Metadata / Ontology Standard
Book of Tea	Book	Library of Congress	MODS DC MARCXML	MODS / BIBFRAME
Portrait of Sen no Rikyu	Hanging scroll	Metropolitan Museum of Art	-	CDWA / CIDOC-CRM
The Tea Scoop of Rikyu	Bamboo	Metropolitan Museum of Art	-	CDWA / CIDOC-CRM
Invitation to a Tea Ceremony	Painting	Europeana	EDM	EDM
Woodblock Print of Samurai in Tea Ceremony	Woodblock print	British Museum	-	CDWA / CIDOC-CRM
Kimono (hitoe)	Costume	Museum of Fine Arts Boston	-	CDWA / CIDOC-CRM
Ikebana Hinagata Densho	Illustrated Book	Internet Archive	MARCXML	MODS / BIBFRAME
Mysterious Japan	Book	Internet Archive	MARCXML	MODS / BIBFRAME
Tea Bowl	Ceramic	The Metropolitan Museum of Art	-	CDWA / CIDOC-CRM
The Japanese Footbridge	Painting	National Gallery of Art	-	CDWA / CIDOC-CRM

Knowledge Organization

Starting from the basic metadata and descriptive information, we developed a Theoretical Model using natural language to highlight each object's connection to the theme of sadō and its relationships to other items in the collection.

Building on this, the Conceptual Model abstracts the objects further—representing them through URIs and defining their relationships using ontology-based schemas. Details can be viewed on the dedicated page by clicking below.

Theoretical Model

Each item is interpreted through narrative connections to sadō, revealing cultural meanings and interrelations in context.

Conceptual Model

Objects are represented conceptually using ontology schemas, enabling exploration across entities in a more abstract level.

Knowledge Representation

The final steps of the project involved the data creation of the relations created in our models.
The process includes the text analysis and encoding of The Book of Tea, the convertion into HTML and RDF datasets, and the visualization of the full RDF dataset.

Full Text Analysis

An analysis of text extracts from The Book of Tea. TEI encoding, transformation into HTML using XSLT, and RDF production using Python.

RDF Production

The data convertion of descriptive metadata into ontology based RDF triples using Python into the Turtle serialization format, making them interoperable for the semantic web.

RDF Visualization

The visualization RDF data as a graph, showcasing the relationships formed in our ontology.

View details