Sentoku Tsuba With Shoki Scroll

[JohnTo]

I’ll ask the usual questions at the start, namely any ideas on the school and maker, plus any ideas about the theme of the design, which I have not seen before?

This large maru gata tsuba appears to be made of brass (sentoku) or closely related alloy giving it a slight red-brown patina.  The scene continues over both sides and depicts a hanging scroll falling off what I assume is a wooden, two legged easel (in shakudo?) with a tying ring at the top.  There is also a shakudo vase with a golden flower and long tapering leaves (daffodil?).  This vase is on a separate, slightly sunken, lightly hammered, chocolate brown area, separated from the main body by a zig-zag line, possibly to indicate a violent event, e.g. perhaps the scene has been disrupted by a sudden gust of wind.  Like a good fitting toupee, I cannot detect the join between the sentoku and the chocolate brown area, so perhaps it is not inlay, but a change in patination.

The tsuba is fitted with a shakudo fukurin and has a pair of kogai hitsu ana.  Staining and slight damage around the nagako ana indicates that this tsuba was once mounted on a sword and was not just a piece made for presentation, or the 19thC export market.

The loose hanging scroll depicts Shoki (the demon slayer) picked out in fine gold inlay on a charcoal grey background (representing a sheet of paper), which is framed in sentoku(?) and copper, all on a shakudo scroll.  Even the end of the pole at the bottom of the scroll is tipped in silver.  The vase is finely inlayed with gold and the flower (daffodil) is probably gold.  Altogether, a finely crafted piece of work, but unsigned (not that signatures can be relied upon).

I reckon that the tsuba was made about 1800, give or take 50 years maximum.  There were lots of skilled kinko artisans around this time, many signed their works, but some did not.  There maybe two clues as to the school.  On the face of the tsuba there are three flower shaped punch marks, one at each bottom corner of the nagako ana and a double at the point.  None is complete, but may be a ca. 14 petal chrysanthemums.  They look like tagane mei (chisel name) rather than attempts to modify the shape.   The other clue is the representation of the scroll, which wraps around the rim to appear on both faces of the tsuba. To judge from auction catalogues etc., continuing the design on both the front and back of mixed metal tsuba seems to be in vogue during the first half of the 19thC.

One of the aspects that I love about collecting tsuba is figuring out the scene that they depict.  At the time they were made, I expect that the themes would have been well known to the average Japanese, but many have now been forgotten.  I spent a long time wondering why someone would want to portray a scroll being blown aside by a gust of wind.  Then I watched a Japanese version of the 47 Ronin and think that I may have found the answer.  The Ako Incident, in which the 47 Ronin avenged their lord’s death by killing Lord Kira took place on 30th January 1703.  OK, that was winter, but an early daffodil could have been placed as a decoration indoors in a vase, as shown on the tsuba.  The popular version of events has Lord Kira hiding in a charcoal store out in the back somewhere.  I can’t imagine the main charcoal store being close to Kira’s bedroom and maybe the story was exaggerated to further blacken Kira’s name (sorry guys, could not resist that one).  A different version has Kira being found in a secret courtyard behind his bedroom, hidden by a large scroll, that maybe held a small quantity of charcoal for the bedroom heating.  Perhaps the design on the scroll (Shoki, killer of oni) represents Oishi Kuranosuke killer of Kira.

I have found flower punch marks (literature examples) on tsuba by Hagiya Katsuhira (Mito school, ca. 1870), Ichijuken  Teruaki (Kato school, ca 1860), Funada Ikken (Goto school, 1844), unsigned Mino Goto, unsigned Hamano school (19^th C), Oishi Akichika (1854, Oishi Akichika making a tsuba alluding to Oishi Kuransuke, see above?, Nah, coincidence) and Kano Natsuo.  So I guess flower punches were used by many of the tsuba artisans in the 19thC, which probably reflects fluidity between the artists and workshops, many of which were in Edo.  I would imagine that artisans fashioned their own tools and that making flower punches was part of the training in one or more workshops.

I gather that many of the 19thC kinko artist used designs supplied by other artists on paper and I believe this is why we see so many 19^thC kinko tsuba with apparently unique designs; there were so many to choose from.  To my aesthetics, it makes a welcome change from the same old Kinai dragons, aoi leaves, carp, etc. of the 18thC and similar repetitious designs of other schools. Unfortunately, many of these high quality kinko works are unsigned. Why was this?  

My best guess is that this tsuba was made about 1800 in one of the Edo workshops (Goto, Yokoya, Nara, Kono), but this is not based upon handling similar examples, so feel free to challenge.

Height:   7.8 cm; Width:   7.65 cm; Thickness (rim):  0.55 cm; Weight: 168g

Best regards, John

(just a guy making observations, asking questions, trying to learn)

 

[Pete Klein]

Has a bit of a Shonai vibe to it.

[TETSUGENDO]

 Nara or Shonai?  Here is an image you may like from the Bushell collection at LACMA.

[kissakai]

I've seen those punch marks before so need to do a bit of digging

No idea it the punch marks are generic to a certain smith

[Pete Klein]

Those punch marks are exactly that - punch marks, just nicer ones.  They aren't tagane mei or specific to any school.  Just a nicer way of moving metal to fit the tsuba.  You will see them more often on kinko as opposed to tetsu tsuba.  You can see there are two on top superimposed and the nakago ana has been further widened which cut into them.

[Kurikata]

Shonai Shoami 所内正阿彌 School tsuba to me

[Curran]

I saw this post when John put it up.

Reflex was 'Shonai', but that is what I have been reading on lately. I was afraid I'd be guilty of current bias.

[JohnTo]

Thanks for the replies. Pete, Bruno, Curran, Steven: Shonai Shoami.  That is a branch of the Shoami that I am unfamiliar with.  The few examples that I have found so far show a wide variety of styles, so I would not have attributed this tsuba to that school.  There were a couple of examples of similar workmanship, so thanks for the info.  Its what the NMB is for after all, sharing ideas and learning.

 

Pete.  I'm not sure that I agree with you saying that they are just punch marks.  The bottom ones do not seem to have any significant effect on the size of the nagako ana.  I think that they are more for decoration, as I have seen on other 19thC tsuba made for export and have never been on a sword.  Nagoya mono tsuba (cheap copies of Mino Goto) have a characteristic pattern of 10 large punch marks in all the half dozen patterns I have seen (treasure ship, pagaoda, Ono no Komachi etc).  See discussion on NMB a couple of months ago.  Although large marks, they are all the same pattern and obviously not for resizing the nagako ana.  I suspect that these flower punch marks were used in several workshops in Edo.

 

Thanks again for the info everyone, best regards, John

Just a guy trying to learn and sitting at his PC waiting for the postman to deliver his next treasure from Japan

[Ford Hallam]

I would only add that the base metal is almost certainly a brass and not sentoku at all.

 

I know the literature to date has been somewhat arbitrary in labelling these types of pieces, perhaps sentoku sounds more valuable/exotic than brass, but the fact is sentoku (Xuande bronze from China) only makes an appearance in Japan in the very late 19th century, quite probably not even in the late Edo period but early Meiji. My hypothesis, at present, is that the disruptions and destruction of Chinese society and especially the Imperial structures, wrought by the British, led to some skilled artisans from those workshops fleeing to Japan, where their expertise seems to have been readily absorbed into the existing craft knowledge. Needless to say this detail of social history hasn't received any attention from scholars as yet.

 

The Hizen province artists, father and son, Mitsuhiro, famous for their 1000's monkey, horses etc 'sentoku' inscribed tsuba were merely smart marketers. Analysis of their prices show them to quite different from both the original Xuande bronze and the late Japanese adoption, sentoku. Japanese scholars and collectors knew of the fabled Xuande bronze and avidly sought the typical censors, so supplying tsuba is the same desirable alloy was a shrewd move...even if it was dishonest.

 

Sentoku is merely the Japanese pronunciation of the Chinese Xuande.

[JohnTo]

Thanks Ford for the clarification.  It is interesting to look at descriptions of 'sandy brown' alloy tsuba in various catalogues and books.  One auctioneer will describe nearly all such items as brass, another as sentoku and another as shinchu.  I guess it needs someone to publish a book on Japanese alloys.  Then we have differing compositions of brass, anything from 5% to 40% zinc, sometimes with a dash of lead, etc.  So to misquote Star Trek 'Its brass, John, but not as we know it'

 

Looking forward to the book, thanks again for the comment, John