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Heianjo Tsuba; Damage Or Decoration


zanilu

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Hi to all and a Happy Christmas to all of you.

 

This maru gata tsuba have a chrysanthemum petals design the inner surface of the dote mimi and of scattered stylized lightling on the body of the tsuba (hira-ji). Both motives are inlayed in brass flush with the surface (shinchu hirazogan). The dimensions are 75.8 mm x 75.0 mm and a thickness of 4.2 mm at mimi.

 

I had it cheap on Yahoo Auctions because it was not in the best of conditions with a good deal of rust.

 

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Though it cleaned up nicely, what do you think?

 

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Based on one reference found in Otani

 

post-3411-0-92881000-1514221723_thumb.jpg

 

and a NBTHK Tokubetsu Hozon papered tsuba

 

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post-3411-0-79810100-1514221823_thumb.jpg

 

I think that my tsuba can be classified as Heianjo Zogan.

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This tsuba shares with both references an almost identical design of chrysantemum petals on the mimi and with the second one the same stilyzed lightling design on the body (raimon). On the hira-ji of the omote side on the left of the kogai hitsu-ana there are two small inlayed circles

 

post-3411-0-31164700-1514222058_thumb.jpg

 

On the reference of Otani the same kind of inaly is also present close to the wave thus it could be probaly interpreted as droplet. In analogy the two circles of FT-0082 could be inffered to be rain drops given the presence of the stylized lightnings of the raimon.

 

As for the two references the hira-ji of this tsuba shows also a surface finish looks like ishime-ji to me (but I defer to your judgment on this).

 

Close to the top part of the nakago-ana, on the omote, and on the edge of the kogai hitsu-ana, on the ura side, there seems to be traces of layering as consequence of folding and fire welding of the steel.

 

post-3411-0-41672000-1514222187_thumb.jpg

 

The patina is uniform and in very good conditions except of a few spots on the mimi and on the hira-ji and have a dark brown/chocolate color with red undertones when seen under sun light. 

 

On the ura side hira-ji  there are three damaged areas (or so they looked to me initially) that seems, at a first cursory analisys, to have been subject to de-layering of the iron as consequence of corrosion or damages due to blows. 

 

On this particular feature I would like to have the opinion of you NMB members, at first I mistook these regions as damages but on a deeper analysis I have start to wonder wether these can be an intentional part of the decoration.

 

The extent of the "damage" expecially the one above of the nakago-ana tip and the one close to the kogai hitsu-ana is so great that the surface of the "burst" part protrude from the surface of the iron by an extend comparable to the

thickness of the plate.

 

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Given the extent of the protrusion one would have expected to find a cavity under the protruding region that is not there. There is no cavity just iron with a patina that is identical in color and texture to the rest of the hira-ji.

 

Damage from blows seems also unlikely in view of level of deformation of the metal on the ura and the absence of any trace of visible damage in corresponding spots on the omote side.

 

Could it be that those "damages" are rather made on pourpose as part of the ishime-ji desing of the hira-ji? 

However if part of the desing why have them only to the ura side of the tsuba, visible only when the sword was drawn?

 

I am open and grateful, to any comment from more experienced NMB member on this puzzling, to me at least, aspect.
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I have several dozen Heianjo & Yoshiro tsuba, but have seen none of the damage that yours exhibits. It almost looks like someone was trying to pry out a section of the brass inlay. I doubt that the damage was incidental, or part of the design, but real experts like Ford Hallam should weigh in on this.

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Yes Pete that was my first thought too.

But what I have found so puzzling is that the blisters are not empty or full of rust. Upon probing their interior with bone splinters I found under a thin layer of rust the what look like the same metal of the hira-ji with what look like the same patina.

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Luca,

 

First off, maybe its the lighting, but your brass looks a tad bright - you gotta be careful when working on the brass itself While I've seen a couple of old "bright" ones (maybe its an alloy thing), typically un-messed-with ones (well, un-messed with for a while) brass has a patina (especially on work that would be binned as heianjo zogan). .  While  the wabi aesthetic was strong ( I think some losses were either "encouraged" or the pieces were actually made that way - more on that in a minute), the bubbles here look like a forging flaw that got water in it and 'bubbled"/corroded away. 

 

On the surface, I got permission to show some images so here goes... 

 

First up, here's a Heianjo zogan piece with a pretty overt Christian symbol on it, so you -know- that it was not used for very long. 

 

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I've always felt that because of that this is an important piece from a condition standpoint.  I have reprocessed this image to relieve the shadows so you can see the iron surface better.  There are several things to notice.  First, there are some areas of deep rust due to it sitting somewhere for a long time.  This as well as the improbability of it -ever- being carried after what, 1613 leads me to believe that the surface has never been redone (there would be no rational reason to "clean up' the piece before the end of the Edo period, and those live rust spots looks pretty old so I believe a late edo/meiji/taisho "shine job" didn't happen).

 

But aside from areas of "original surface what is also very interesting (to me at least) are the losses - while maybe some of the losses around the rust spot near the kozuka hitsu, there are also areas where there are tendrils missing but the surface is pristine(!).  this would lead one to believe that 1) either the piece was actually made this way, or 2) they were removed for some reason (either deliberately or accidentally (one thing I noted with the piece in hand is that the zogan does a good job of catching on fabric (it almost sticks to an inspection glove)).

 

And I've found other pieces where the the piece was apparently well cared for (rather than being fluff and buff job) and the losses seem either incongruous with the surface condition or appear either deliberately removed (or never installed to begin with:

 

And here's another example.  While it was apparently obviously used some, I believe it was well cared for, and the losses don't (entirely) seem to jibe with the surface condition:

 

post-204-0-44582900-1514317195_thumb.jpg

 

And here are some spinny pics - which are perhaps more telling:

 

http://www.rkgphotos.com/facebook_stuff/kiku_heianjo/kiku_heianjo_front/kiku_heianjo_front.html

http://www.rkgphotos.com/facebook_stuff/kiku_heianjo/kiku_heianjo_back/kiku_heianjo_back.html

 

And here's another piece that seems to indicate losses were a "thing" - even though I believe its probably aizu shoami, it appears that either the whirlpools were deliberately removed or the piece was made without some of the zogan ever being being put in:

 

post-204-0-66221300-1514317953_thumb.jpg

 

(and a spinny pic of this too (with the file names totally bolluxed):

 

http://www.rkgphotos.com/facebook_stuff/wheel_heianjo_front/kiku_heianjo_back.html

 

Best,

rkg

(Richard George)
 

 

 

 


 

 

 

 

 

 

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Hi Richard

 

I didn't touch the brass, except for handling the tsuba while removing the rust. After removing the rust I washed it with cold water and a mild soap. A good part of the shine of the brass is in the lighting, seen under direct sunlight the brass color is darker but not as dark as in the original pictures (the original pictures where off a bit wit the color too). Most of that dark color was actually dirt that went away by washing.

As usual you posts are full of information, you give me a lot of things to ponder upon, thank you!

 

Luca

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Richard has suggested that the brass inlay missing from many/most of the Heianjo/Kaga Yoshiro tsuba might be due to the inlay being deliberately removed to improve the wabi-sabi aesthetics.  I believe that the inlay is missing because iron tsuba with brass inlay are intrinsically unstable with respect to galvanic corrosion.  Let me explain:

The anodic index for some common metals used in inlayed tsuba is as follows; gold: 0.0, silver: -0.15, copper: -0.35, brass:-0.40, iron: -0.85.  The higher the difference between two metals, the greater the chance that the one with the highest negative value (anodic) will corrode.  Thus gold, silver and copper inlays should cause iron to corrode faster than brass.  However, the speed of corrosion also depends upon whether the environment is humid or salty (which will accelerate corrosion due to better electrical conductance).  I imagine that brass inlay does not adhere to iron as tightly as the other metals, as it is not so malleable, allowing moisture (rain, sweat) to seep into the brass/iron interface, accelerating the rusting of the iron and loosening the brass inlay.

The phenomenon is well known.  For example in the 17thC lead sheathing was found to cause the corrosion of iron bolts in ships in the British navy and in 1763 the Admiralty received a report recommending that copper cladding of ships (to prevent barnacle growth) should avoid direct contact of copper with the iron nails used to fasten the cladding, as the nails rapidly corroded.

Don’t believe me?  Well drop two iron tsuba into salt water.  One inlaid with gold, the other with brass.  The one inlaid with gold should rust a lot faster.  Only joking, but perhaps Ford would like to try a little experiment with inlaid pieces of iron.

I think that the heyday of brass inlay in tsuba was about 1600.  I wonder if they fell out of favour when the inlay started to fall out after about 50 years? 

 

Best regards, John (just a guy making observations, asking questions and trying to learn)

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Hi Cristian 

 

I was pointing toward a Early Edo dating do you concur?

 

What is the opinion of the other NMB members?

 

Also it seems that the general consensus is going toward delamination.

 

Than you to all of who posted a comment here!

 

Luca

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  • 3 years later...

An old posting that I enjoyed going over because I am not sure if the question of tsuba condition, brass inlay loss has been resolved. It has certainly been discussed.

Personally I liked what Luca showed and would be pleased to have, the rest were even more appealing of course.

I hope Members enjoy seeing again, maybe commenting?

Roger j

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Thanks for resurrecting this post, I enjoyed reading it!

-I like the square lightning and rain drop motif of the tsuba... wouldn't have guessed that was the intent before seeing this post.

-Great info on the corrosion factor from John B

-Delaminations of the plate for sure. You can see that two large flakes (outlined in red) have already popped off on the omote side.

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-That "nick" near the mimi at the top of ura side is a bit of mystery... looks almost like an angled chisel mark to me.

It appears to slope in from the left side side, but then there's a pretty straight edge on the right side of the nick. 

Why someone would do that? I don't know... But that's what it looks like.

image.png.57a84dbfc93fe57094b154439bc7075c.png      1411120381_Screenshot2021-11-09085646.jpg.18ccc9196011d94f34759ba79961c048.jpg

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