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The above is a strong possibility. Or, one crest could be the fief crest, and the other is the personal crest of the owner. The 5-7-5 Paulownia crest became the crest of the government sometime in Meiji, so it could represent a connection to the government or imperial family.5 points
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Hi Ron, I think you would be smart to leave the saya be until you can show it to someone with loads of experience at lacquer restoration. Any attempt you make may be successful but, starting from zero experience as you are, it may also be a mistake you don't recognize until it is too late. I have long thought that some of us here on NMB are way too quick to suggest do-it-yourself repairs to beginning collectors. Restoration advice without having seen even one picture of the problem is a mistake. No offense meant towards Darrel; just looking out for the swords. Grey2 points
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Kudos to Fred, for sticking to his word. That is the important thing here. Many respected and old-time collectors and dealers aren't well versed on this level of modern fakes. I expect when many of us did our learning and main collecting, these weren't as much of an issue, and we now have a bit of "modern fakery" catching up to do. It's sad. But how a seller handles the sale is the important part, and Fred stepped up here.2 points
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I'm certainly no expert but it seems to be fake to me. The blade has writing on it which seems to correlate with fakes, and the tsuka and saya all seem totally different from the examples listed as authentic I have seen before. Check out this link for lots of good info: http://ohmura-study.net/957.html I am, however not particularly knowledgeable so perhaps it is good to wait for a second opinion. Also, it is probably best to move this to the Military swords section. As far as I know that is the section for non-traditionally made blades like the NCO Guntos which this may or may not be.2 points
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*** Oei Bizen Wakizashi One thing to be cautious about is that for some reason the Oei Bizen smiths went through a window of production period where they made an excessively large number of dated wakizashi and some O-tanto. Whatever the reason, the ratio of their wakizashi to their tachi and some tanto is disproportionate and the sheer supply of them brings the price of the waks down a bit. The quality also varies significantly. You have high end pieces like the one attached for about 45-50k many years ago (I cannot remember the level of papers), and you have others that you can purchase for less than 10k. Do pay attention to the jigane and quality of the hamon. Yasumitsu, Morimitsu, and usually Iesuke hamon should be very vibrant.2 points
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I have 3 year old daughter, so displaying anything in the house become bit tricky - no matter how high I will put it she will move the chair and get it... But most of my bronze in displaying cases I get years ago, when I was living in Chicagoland. It was old gentleman making them and selling at the gunshow.2 points
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Monday morning and just cruising Yahoo!Japan while taking a work break.. Coffee in hand. -------------------------- There is no debating that Yahoo!Japan has become a much more dangerous place than it once was. Shilling bidding is the normal, and the ratio of fake crap to okay finds is up up up. The only good online auction find I had this year was on eBay of all places, though I did pick one decent one off of Yahoo!Japan. I'm saddened to see that a long time seller on Yahoo!Japan who often had nice lower end 'Catch, Study, Release' pieces has spent the last 6 months to 1 year increasingly listing heavily doctored or fake tsuba. He currently has an Owari up one now that is straight out of the Japan secret tobacco+tea+furniture stain dip. On the flipside, there is one of those 'dilettante' Nobuiye up. I'll have to hit the kinko Meikan later and see if it is the 'Akasaka Nobuiye' or 'Echizen Nobuiye'. I went through a phase early on in collecting when I enjoyed these. They are decent tsuba with nice iron. Anyone want to have a go at it, be my guest. Price is very fair at $100. Usually they go for several hundred. https://page.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/h10177583561 point
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Good day to you all Recently i acquired a Gunto in a very good condition and from what I know, learned, heard and figured out the translation of the Mei reads as in the picture. Would appreciate it a lot if one of the experts on this forum could perform a check and verify if it is correct. Thank you very much and with best regards Erwin1 point
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I had a good deputy service, but they closed down at the end of 2019. I switched to the Hong Kong owned arselickers at Buyee.com , and they were bad. Didn't we have a thread on how much they sucked? They keep refusing to close my account, and keep sending me emails no matter how much I -unsubscribe-. Man, they lick the toe cheese off of goats. I eventually switched to another service that is okay. Got some quirks, but none of the BS of Buyee. I use them more to buy things like a modern potter whose work I've collected a little for 7 years, and sometimes a vintage sukajan. Sometimes a shot at a tsuba, but very rarely. Yahoo!Japan is more entertainment value these days.1 point
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Yasumitsu tachi: Though to Scotland several times, I've never been to England. When I make it back to Glasgow or finally actually set foot in sassenach grass (please, meant as joke)... I'm going to knock on Paul's door and ask to finally see this crazy homage example he has. Very rare example at one high end of what Yasumitsu could do. His mastery of jigane, hamon, and utsuri gets a little crazy in the best pieces. -- Hopefully Paul will let me in. I'll bring some American Garden Gnomes as a gift, unless Paul would prefer some American Bourbon. It isn't something I have had in many years, but I do have to admit it is one of the better things in the USA.1 point
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I once discussed this with Yoshindo Yoshihara who likes making them, but he said they have a tendency to develop hagiri, sometimes long after having been made. Ian Bottomley1 point
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On the topic of etching, here's a few images for some eye candy: The first two are etched for sure, but I'm not certain about the last two. Here's a nice etched kinko piece from Richard George's (RKG) collection. Accidentally stumbled across it in the ancient "udenuki-ana" thread (which is an interesting read). And here's a mumei iron one that was on YahooJ not long ago: And here's two other ones that I suspect might be etched, possibly etched then chiseled, but not 100% certain... 1st is mumei, 2nd is a Jakushi (ura side).1 point
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Well. It’s a fine set, but top is something else in my opinion. The kabuto looks like a muromachi munehisa, which is good. The menpo is a copy of Munesuke’s or Muneakira’s work by Munetaka, good but not brilliant. The rest of the armor is Daimyo quality, but i have seen (a lot) better than this. The prices were top, that’s sure!1 point
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Renaissance wax won’t hurt it but you may want to try further cleaning. Micromark makes 12,000 grit cloth paper and there is a polishing compound that is finer (but I’ll have to look it up as I’m busy right now- tomorrow).1 point
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Interesting one in that both sides have mon, but different ones. Also interesting because of it's possible history. Found this on an auction posted by John, @Shugyosha, HERE. The tanto is made for Tomoo, in 1843. The seller speculates that it was "Nagasawa Tomoo 長澤伴雄 (1808-1859) who was a scholar of Japanese classical literature and Waka poetry. He was a Samurai at the Kii Domain, Wakayama. He compiled multi-volume Waka poetry collections. It is likely that the long poems inscribed on both sides of the blade are by him."1 point
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Just an update, my set did bounce at shinsa. Once I was able to get ahold of him, Fred was more than accommodating. He has issued a return for the set and covered the shinsa fees in full.1 point
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This may be of interest to members with some pocket money to spend: https://www.zacke.at/auction/details/jap1221-fine-Japanese-art/?au=411 point
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Is there any visible hada or hamon? It seems like a curious piece. Maybe modern made? A tanto repurposed from an old showato? I am fairly new and kind of guessing here so I would defer to anyone more knowledgeable.1 point
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So I currently have two swords, one is almost finished (polishing and restoration), the second is just a cool old (1300s) wakizashi. Love em both. Just came across an interesting sword and story that I'd like to pass along and see if anybody has advice or input for a friend of mine. He came across a wakizashi in of all places a local community theater prop room - he knows enough to realize this sword shouldn't be used as a prop and managed to save it. It looks old - not just old but really old and authentic. It's in pretty rough shape, but my inexperienced gut tells me it is worth investigating its origins. I can get more pictures but I was able to snap the signature. Any thoughts on this particular signature.1 point
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Bump! When both tsuba are sold I will make a donation to the board.1 point
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Hi Jean , Thanks for your post- All of the tsubas you mention are part of a large ( over 150 piece ) collection that I acquired a few months ago following the death of the owner. I have not had time to sort all of these out and in fact do not have the knowledge to do this properly . At some point in the past , it looks as if the collection , or a large part of it was dropped , possibly down stairs , causing a number of boxes to be smashed , others damaged and a lot of the tsubas mixed up and put back into boxes at random. Unfortunately there is no documentation to show how the collection was formed and so I am forced to guess or try to get opinions as to maker / school etc . I am hoping, that, by posting these in my thread together with other pieces I am a bit more certain about , my errors will be corrected by those NMB members more knowledgeable , especially in the field of sukashi and old iron , than myself. Less than one third of the collection has any attribution at all , ( by the box being labelled ) ; the rest are in plain boxes . Re. Item No. 153 - has a label on the box stating ' Ko Katchushi Ex Jim Gilbert ' . The tsuba in the box must therefore be one of the mixed up items. There are other tsubas in different boxes which would more closely resemble traditional Ko Katchushi work. Re. Item No. 154 - there is no evidence of tekkotsu anywhere . Many Thanks for your time and interest ! If anyone is able to assist me with the above ' jigsaw puzzle ' , either on the NMB posts , or off Board , please get in contact , any help much appreciated. Regards1 point
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It depends we’re you draw the line between very good and top It’s an later Edo period “interpretation” of a medieval armor…1 point
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I would say that the date does add a great deal - but what we are seeing here is not the hamon but the polish - really need better photos of the temperline. Its Aoi so I am going to pop over and see if there are oshigata, The other thing you need is a close examination of the jigane - if the Morimitsu is tighter overall and the Yasumitsu has openings or small imperfections that could also hurt the price. Condition is everything... -t1 point
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Rather than a Tanto this looks to be a Wakizashi or Katana re-purposed as a Tanto. As a general rule of thumb you don't see Shinogi-Zukuri Tanto.1 point
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Sunny I didn't say that you are terrible, I said the video's are. As mention in the other thread Nmb is a place full of people that love Nihonto and want to respect and preserve them. My sword training is with a Sensei and is purely for my own personal development and not to show the world on youtube. I love doing tameshigiri too but with Chinese made katana and tatami and sometimes pool noodles too. Im not a master but it is obvious to me that you havnt had a lot of training with a sensei and this puts your swords and you at higher risk of damage. You say they were made to be used but when they were made I doubt the smith had in mind somebody cutting noodles in their lounge room on youtube. Surely you can understand why people are against this. You said in the other thread that I have a pathetic life but I have a life that I wouldnt swap with anyone and consider myself the luckiest person in the world. Sorry but I care more about the swords that you are unfortunately the custodian of that weather you get more youtube views.1 point
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Item No. 51 Tsba in Shibuici with gold, silver and shakudo detailing 7.64 cm x 7.53 cm x 0.49 cm Two butterflies , three spiders webs and large dragonfly on a fine Ishime ground. Signed Nara Tadashige and Jochiku with a kao . This is therefore a dai-saku work from the Nara and Murakami Schools from the 19th cent. Looks considerably better in hand than in photographs - the very fine Ishime giving a matt surface finish , very evenly applied . The webs glow and almost jump out from the tsuba in the right light and the detailing on the insects is very well done. Just as a bonus , the dragonfly's eyes are inlaid with a striking green iridescent mother of pearl/ abalone , that really stand out . Have been unable to place Nara Tadashige - does not appear to be shown in the genealogies book . Also there are two artists shown as signing Jochiku in the Murakami school.... Any Haynes or Wakayama references would , as usual , be much appreciated.1 point
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Item No. 50 Brass tsuba with raised rim , ishime ground , gold ,silver , copper and shakudo inlays 8.20 cm x 7.45 cm x 0.47 cm over plain , 0.71 cm over figure Subject of Monkey King , Songoku standing on a cloud , exhaling a crowd of small armed figures who are attacking / frightening off an Oni . King Oni maybe ? The rear uses gold dust to create the impression of mist With a grass script ? signature Natsuo. Studio ? Could perhaps do with a light clean , there seems to be detailing hidden ... Any views / comments ?1 point
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OK. Bear with me. I am going to try to stab something in the heart and I am not sufficiently leveled up. I have dagger with 1d4 damage and maybe 1.5 attacks per round. I know I am out of my normal area of expertise but this is something that keeps coming up. Gold does not patinate. This is why King Tut's beautiful gold mask survives until now. This is why gold artifacts that we uncover all the time are still gold. You can do two things: make it dirty, or you can make it rough. Gold like swords, when you polish it you increase the reflectivity until it approaches a mirror. The more you do this the more of the color is lost if a light is shining into it and into your eyes and you see more of the environment coming in. Make it enough of a mirror and it will be. But at the right angles the color will be deep. Somewhere something else is not going to be putting its image through the mirror. Normally the metal is absorbing wavelengths in the blue and and some green and reflecting red. This mix of color, of green and red is interpreted as our eyes as yellow. From a human standpoint we can see 3 colors: red, blue and green. We know because we cut up human eyes and we can see the receptors. We use this every day, you sit in front of your computer and you look at these nice white pixels in the backgound. I took pictures of six pixels with a super high powered lens and this is what you're looking at: That's white. Six pixels in fact on an all white screen. Each one of those circuits is 0.005cm wide. Pixels are made up of three sub pixels. One for each real color. From far enough back the light mixes and you just get the same receptor tickled by al three tiny circuits and your brain goes "ah this is white." So what you see when you see gold is basically a metal with a blue absorption and red and green reflection. When we surpress the color blue your eye reacts having two out of three receptors tickled and the brain goes "Oh, I call that yellow when we see this configuration of receptors being tickled." So, yellow isn't what I call "real" any more than white is "real" once we break it down, white's an illusion in the brain when you tickle all three color sensors just right. Yellow is an illusion, a mix of green and blue in our receptors. This may be a digression though. OK, now .... one of the reasons we like gold is that it reacts with almost nothing. Patina is a chemical reaction of sorts. Iron forms oxides which make a patina. Silver forms sulfites and oxides and makes its black patina. Japanese experimented with chemicals and combinations of alloys to get different colors, hence we get shakudo and shibuichi as the reactions produce nice colors for art that are reasonably stable. Gold just don't react on its own. If you want to make gold "red" what you need to do is to turn the green off. There isn't any real way to make gold stop reflecting green. So you basically have to treat it with something, because it won't react on its own. You have to somehow paint it. The fact that it never changes otherwise is why we love gold everything. It's permanent. Unless it's been doped with a lot of other elements. ... What I got with kodogu always was that people had referenced this gold patina, this showing up on nice old pieces and confirming their age because ... patina! But, you don't just leave a chunk of 22kt gold out there and expect it to turn red the way silver will turn black. This is why gold has been so precious forever. It's unalterable except with very powerful chemicals which will dissolve it. You can dunk it in sulfuric acid and it will be happy. Dump in nitric, it will be happy, dump in 50/50 and you will finally dissolve it. Back to us, we get this impression again about gold patinating to get this red color which never made sense to me. I found this in Mosle's speech to the Japan society: So here he has Mitsutaka the 13th head dummying up some first generation Yujo menuki to have a "current, hip" look. This current hip look is an artificial treatment added on later, during this time, where there was a fad for red looking gold. We are undergoing our own fad right now as men are getting pink gold watches and there are pink gold phones and computers. This kind of red or pink gold is made in the case of real gold by adding in excess amounts of copper. Pickling away silver in a gold alloy may make the rest be deeper and if you have copper in there you can get a red-gold result. But high carat gold like Yujo probably used doesn't have enough silver to pickle it away. I don't think that is the right tack. And also if he did this it wouldn't wear so easily I think as what would be left are copper and gold and somewhat wear resistant. Better than gold anyway. So I think this is some kind of application. Or fire scaling to bring the copper up and oxidize it. So whatever Mitsutaka has come up with is some kind of treatment, or maybe a binder and he's basically painted this stuff in place. What I am driving at here is a few things: 1. this red gold is not gold patinating on its own, forget that, if the gold was good quality it should be the same now as it was 500 years ago if it didn't get dirty, unlike iron which will rust and patinate if cared for 2. this "red gold" look is not even traditional going back past the 13th or so Goto generation, and Mosle has caught him adding it to older Goto elements. This means that the fad to get this done gave Mitsutaka extra work on existing antique items to add this treatment. 3. it rubs off quite easily revealing the base metal. The only thing that this is "correct" for is a trend around the time of Goto Mitsutaka for making this kind of reddish look to the gold. The trend does not last but since he apparently treated older Goto works it's mistaken for some kind of natural part of the aging process. Now, there is naturally going to be some gunk and scratches and some of this does add to the antique look. In furniture making (I have some experience in goldsmithing and furniture making but I am not at the depth of experience as a couple on this forum, obviously Ford in goldsmithing) but if you do some antiquing of furniture to make it look older you're rubbing stain into the crevices amongst other things. The idea probably that the surface takes more wear so you're trying to create some contrast. And we see that in these examples. Not that they were made to look older but that whatever this red application was that they put on didn't adhere well and the highest areas tended to come off with some wear. I have some good photos recently of good Goto work and I listed it oldest to newest. The oldest is 4th to 6th generation Goto from Momoyama and these are quite evidently red now. This is the kind of thing that Mitsutaka was treating during the trend period according to Mosle who picked it up from other Japanese experts of the day. So these are from around 1570 or so. After this is Goto Teijo as it should look. There is some color variation because of flash and environment and different times these things were taken, some in studio, some with me using a handheld camera and a flash. I had to shift this one to try to bring it back into synch with the others. The third are the Goto Teijo that went onto my Yoshimitsu and they had some purple staining along the bellies. Not sure if that was intentional or them coming into contact with something that left a residue. But this is not gold patinating. Gold needs to react with something to make a patina. Iron reacts with oxygen, silver reacts with sulfer and oxygen. Gold reacts with dick all. The two Teijo are around 1650. These that come after have no papers and they are on a koshirae so I had to cut the same out and I did a dirty job. The work looks nice and I think they would either go something like "Goto" or "Waki Goto" or "Kyo Kinko" if submitted. Carving looks OK but the metal is quite silvery where it's been brightened by rubbing and you can see that it has the red coat of whatever in the deeper areas. First I'm going to display them a bit smaller to make the colors a bit more clear. Top is quite red, bottom feels a bit pink because the bright rubbed areas contrast with the reddish-yellow treatment underneath. Click and get the super high res. You can actually enjoy the carving quite well. Still amazing what these guys were capable of doing. Even in the Momoyama Goto piece you can see the same pattern where the treatment was exposed to hands it easily rubbed off making all the high spots reflective and yellow. Now, these things are no longer constantly being rubbed by hands. In which case if they were tsuba they would just repatinate. As any other metal would. But these will stay here forever because this is not some kind of gold rust. This is because they are an applied treatment I believe, strongly, from the middle Edo as has been pointed out by Mosle. If it's not right for the era it's probably something that should be removed. Last thing to do is to compare the fineness of carving between the Momoyama Goto and the Teijo work. Since the details are basically painted over in the Momoyama piece it can't be shown in its true glory. In the end this is what I think it is. My last point to prove that is that it's really globbed into the crevices. All areas that can't be reached by fingers should be evenly patinated if this was the case. Because a patina would grow from the surface and out and once the surface is covered it should stop because access to the magic air chemical which reacts with gold would be cut off. It's thicker in the crevices because that's where the brush will tend to gloop it in. Now the final nail is that Natsuo treated my Natsuo menuki a bit the same way, but his goal was to create some depth it seems between the undersides of the waves and the shiny foamy breakers. Similar to the way the paintings were done. Dark seas with white breakers. He's goto trained and it's the same color and just runs in the areas that he wants. What I wanted to reject always was that Gold was somehow aging and patinating into this red surface and it's just not the case for gold. The color will only changed based on the finish, whether it gets scratched up or not. But gold doesn't rot. Now, I may have just gone and _ _ _ 's this whole thing up, insert initials that you think appropriate. This is not so much proof as what I know from my past in casting gold and fabricating things in gold, silver platinum and palladium. I can hand fab and I was 3d printing back when we called it rapid prototyping. Whenever we were asked what rapid prototyping was, we explained imagine you had a printer, except that it worked in three dimensions. And then the marketing people I guess ran with 3d printer. Anyway.... I'm willing to be corrected based on science and proof that gold reacts to make a film which is easily rubbed off by fingers. Some gold alloys will patinate of course and you can make fire scale on gold by heating it if there is enough copper. This is another possibility for this treatment. Interested in hearing other opinions on what you think it is. If I'm right though it means that this is crap that was done to older Goto work 10+ generations after it was made and it's something that should be rectified when found. Also any opinions on who made the final Shishi in this set is appreciated as there are probably hallmarks you guys recognize that I don't. No papers and I probably won't be sending them in for papers. They are on the koshirae for my Hasebe tanto and any ideas given will help me advise whomever ends up with it. I would be safer and say Kyo Kinko myself but I think they are a bit more intricately carved for a pretender. I just don't know, the head and tail look right, the body seems a bit different. Lots of details in there though so I just think it's not crap. The material might not be high carat gold though. Same redding treament, maybe makes it from the same era as Mitsutaka whomever made it. It was "in trend". Also be warned the high res is big: 4,400 x 6,400 pixels. High res: http://nihonto.ca/menuki-treatment-l.jpg1 point
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