Most Kenzan tea bowls are cylindrical in form. Their ancestral form can be seen in the undōde tea bowls produced at the Jingdezhen private kilns in Ming-dynasty China. Kenzan made use of the flatness of this cylindrical shape to apply highly painterly designs to them. In this example, one side has a pine tree painted in underglaze iron and dark underglaze blue; the opposite side has the verse Senko shibomazaru keisetsu ari ("The eternal resilience never to shrivel away") in underglaze iron. With this verse, which praises the power of the pine to retain its needles throughout the year, Kenzan likens the tea bowl to a poetic hanging scroll.