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Tsuba help


Mark C

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Hi all,

 

Just picked up this little tsuba at a local arms fair and would like a little help in identifying it.

 

Width= 2 9/16

Height=2 3/4

 

I have a small collection starting with 6 tsuba in total, Maybe its about time I started to get some referance material :idea:

 

Anyway, any help greatly appreciated

 

many thanks

 

mark

post-8-14196733662849_thumb.jpg

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Is that gut feeling or are there specefics that make you feel that way?

 

Hi Ken, this is of course just my opinion, the theme/style is typical of Kaneie school, but the quality of the iron is not there to my eye, nor is the detail and work of the soft metal.

 

Do you see something different ?

 

Rich

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mark,

 

Seperate out into 2 boxes: box1: Copy and box2: Gimei.

 

Rich T is bullseye perfect with his opinion. I second it. But copies are common all through Edo and thereafter. They are to be appreciated for what they are. Posters of Van Gogh and Renoir hang on many a person's wall. Only the biggest chucklehead will try and tell you they are (as a Jamaican friend says...) "Au-then-TIC!". They are still legit hand guards and art, not intended as deception.

 

Gimei are another category.

 

Curran

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Hi Curran,

 

I will do that as I have a few items now for each box.

 

As yourself and Rich have said, this is probably late edo period and that means at least a hundred years old and I do like the look of it otherwise I wouldn't have bought it.

 

Knowing not a lot about Tsuba, I will have to look up Kaneie

 

Many thanks

 

Regards

 

mark

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Ken-

 

It is much about the iron plate.

 

Imagine low grade iron that is produced in sheets or somehow else in quanity. Then hockey puck sized round ones are punched out with cookie cutter or other technique that produces the nearly identical plate. The rough edges from the punching are quickly file finished, but on some sloppy ones the edges still have a bit of nasty hangnail that has worn down with time/age- but is still not exactly perfectionist.

 

The "hockey pucks" are taken in a bucket to a workshop where trained individuals do a wee bit of carving and building up of base designs onto the iron plate. Usually the base design is on the lower right quadrant- in this case the fisherman w/hat. Then using various (and often poisonous) techniques, a minimal amount of precious gold and silver is placed over the copper.

 

It is an assembly line production that might have inspired Henry Ford. "You can have the Model T in any color you like, as long as its black."

 

Kaneiye was one of the most famous prone to copies. Off the top of my head , the Saga Kaneiye guys would continue his designs and make variations on his designs- and sign with their own names. Saga Kaneiye tsuba aren't KANEIYE (the originals), but still more revival style pieces than copies or gimei. Some of them are quite nice.

 

I cannot comment much on "the original" Kaneiye tsuba. I've had little chance to study them in hand, as most of what I've seen is in books...and a calendar sent to me by one of the Japan sword shops (A Kaneiye tsuba for each month of the year!).

 

Curran

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I have one Kaneie, it is the Kodai Kaniei and the plate is most amazing. The work was better by all accounts though in the first two generations.

 

Another thing I should have pointed out was the small size of Mark's tsuba, Kaneie's work was typlically much bigger. This also looks 4 mm or so thick ?.

 

This months NCJSC has 2 excellent images of Kaneie guards in it as parth of the Hompo Soken Kinko Ryakushi.

 

For such a famous man, there is not a lot on line. These are at Choshuya Ginza

 

 

tsuba1.jpg

 

tsuba2.jpg

 

This is my Kodai Kaneie

 

http://www.nihontokanjipages.com/personal/tsuba_collection/kaneie.html

 

Cheers

 

Rich

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Thanks guys, I have more familiarity with Aizu shoami copying. It always comes down to the plate I guess and that is hard to tell on the internet sometimes, especially with color so easily distorted. I will try and handle some at somepoint just to get a feel for them. Rich interesting piece. Nice contrast of the shakudo mimi with the wabu... plate (did I get the wabu right- full word please). It is interesting to note that I have shown some guards to more senior collectors and been told, look at that plate, must have been perfectly flat and smooth, but then you get into the manufactured sheets and that would be a negative of them. I guess the forging of iron to get it perfectly smooth was hard to do? maybe before mass production? Thanks for your input.

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" look at that plate, must have been perfectly flat and smooth, but then you get into the manufactured sheets and that would be a negative of them. I guess the forging of iron to get it perfectly smooth was hard to do? maybe before mass production? "

 

mantis,

get a hold of some ko-umetada tsuba..........some are flat and well polished and yet you can feel/see the iron bones barely under the surface.

 

Milt THE ronin

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Rich, that is a good example from Jinsoo's site. To date I've never much been wowed by Kaneiye, put I look at the iron of that example and observe Kaneiye's subtle obsessive compulsive perfectionist work... you'd think it would be easy to copy- but is actually fairly difficult.

 

I understand his appeal. It isn't what grabs me, but I get it.

 

You'd think it would be an easy thing to copy, like Van Gogh's "Irises", but once you've seen it in person and almost touched it... well, any hopes I migh have ever had of painting myself a decent copy just died then. How many of the Kaneiye copyartists got to handle one and then try and make one?

 

Nice example. I doubt I will ever own a Kaneiye, but who knows. I've always like the Daruma one.

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