Hi All,

I have been looking at this tsuba http://page3.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/c320884726 and according to my references I am coming up with this mei as gimei for shoami ietake (supposedly of Iwa shoami school). I would appreciate any other opinions confirming or denying my analysis. Thanks.

Hi Ken - long time -- I checked out the pages in Wakayama and it's not even close.
Pete

could have guessed that there would be a mantis lurking somewhere close....

A mantis where? lol. Thanks Pete, the mei looked so off, I was thinking maybe I was missing something but I guess it is just a gimei done with no reference to the original mei. Thanks.

With so few examples of this artist available even though he was prolific, I'm not sure. The mei contains correct information. Old style form of 'Yoshu' Matsuyama ju Shoami Ietake. It isn't that far off in style to recorded examples don't you think? Is it the price that directs your judgement a bit too? John

Just about every kanji is written differently and is not matching up to wakayama and the kinko meikan (I think is the other reference I used) examples, Plus when looking online a few examples I did find did match a lot more to the book examples given. I am by no means an expert in reading japanese but the characters were written so differently that I really didn't see anything matching ie the curvatures of lettering are way off & the direction of the tops of kanji aren't matching, so I don't really think even stylistically it matches. The kanji used perhaps matches but how each is written is very different. If I just had a reference book of how it was signed and not the an actual signature picture, I could see thinking it might be ok. But that is why I asked, just to double check. I don't use price especially since it is early in the auction. However, when I do see lots of early bids it actually makes me lean to a more valid signature (the number of bids is more indicative than the early price achieved) . Really though prices don't start rising until the last few days or the final day in my experience. I think most bidders want to try and keep the price down. That's my rationale so far. Thanks.