Ford Hallam

Hi Paul, thank you so much for the offer of help. :-) I think I'm covered now though. Thanks you to Grey Doffin, Richard George and James (Growling bear, UK ) for adding the bits I needed to my search. Thanks again to everyone for the continued support. I'm trying to due dilligent here so it should be worth it. :-) kind regards Ford

Thanks Eloy :-) Henk-Jan. What I want isn't in the Tosogu no Kansho, I have that. And yes, I saw Grey has a copy of Tosogu no Kigen but I'm trying to avoid paying $200 for 2 pages of text (if that) just to verify a minor point. But I see there is apparently an translation of the text on-line somewhere so thanks for that reminder. :-)

Greetings all I was hoping some kind member might have a copy of Sasano's Tosogu no Kigen and be prepared to scan and share a couple of pages with me. If that's you I'd be grateful if you could send me a pm and I'll explain what I'm after. Thanks for reading. regards Ford

That's about right, Max :-) The source of gold for metalworkers, as in most pre-industrial cultures, was generally the gold coinage. Thus the gold alloys often reflect that. The addition of silver doesn't make the alloy much harder (unlike copper) but does make the colour less orange. To restore the appearance of pure gold the surface was essentially etched to leach out the silver. This is called depletion gilding.

nice selection of fine 'gold' pieces...but none of them is actually 'solid gold'....

My bad, Kevin. That's by Soyo II. wrongly labelled the photos. 3rd Gen. Yokoya, second Soyo. It was his father Somin (2nd gen. Yokoya) who is credited with developing the katakiri technique. He was influenced by the paintings of his close friend the ever rebelleous Hanabusa Itchō. This tsuba is an encyclopedia of Yokoya kata-kiri technique. This is a later woodblock print copy of a Hanabusa Itchō painting. The vigour of the original paintings as captured in genuine Yokoya work is what sets them apart from the uninspired copiests and wannabes.

Not very good work bit at least not a fake. I do hope the offer was quite a bit lower than the asking price though. Brian, how about a 'gallery of shame' thread where we can add links to ebay sellers who offer a significant number of obvious fakes? I nominate EdoAntiques. Shamelessly obvious.

Hi Eloy I'm afraid that the item you bought is a fake. It's a modern piece, cast brass probably, and doesn't really properly resemble any authentic Edo period school that I can think of. Sorry.

You might contact Marcus Chambers, he'll sort it out for you. http://www.militaria.co.za/nmb/topic/17535-restoration-services-in-the-us-for-tosogu/

http://www.ebay.com/itm/8884-Japanese-Samurai-Edo-Antique-Ryu-zu-Excellent-Signed-Tsuba-/221893906823?hash=item33a9e85187 I'll back Stephen. This is being offered by Zen Gallery. If they don't know it's a cast copy then they're a danger to themselves never mind your wallet. Look inside the nakago-ana and the ryo-hitsu. Far too many dodgy loooking pieces in their inventory for them to recommended here.

Pete, naturally I will defer to your position of seniority in terms of the 'cheap laugh' and no snide references to 'age before wisdom ' from me either A Kirin Asahi beer might be quite uplifting, I'd try a few pints with you

You can count on me to go for the cheap laugh

The menuki appear to be the bastard love children of an illicit liason between a kirin and a shishi. They're castings imo. The texture of the metal on the inside is a bit of a givaway, those linear 'wrinkles' are a good clue. As are the unfilled gaps in the edge of the pieces where the metal hasn't properly filled the mould or the wax models were'nt fully formed. The backs look to be fairly flat too, they ought to be shaped to fit against the hilt. I'm with Geraint on the Tsuba too. Decidely dodgy.

Aoi-Art is probably a bit out of the way....for my old legs

Hi Michael and welcome to the asylum I'd do as Justin suggests. You're in the perfect place for a bit of refined eduction. Go and see what really good Owari guards are all about. Books are fine but in hand is where the real difference becomes evident. With all due respect to everyone else I'd go straight to Ginza Choshuya or Seikeido. You may find, that if you ask, staff will be happy to help you gain an appreciation of what better quality work looks like. Be warned though, you may need to up your budget if you start to fall for the really good stuff. The two Sasano books on Sukashi tsuba are not a bad start in terms of learning about Owari and the other major pierced tsuba schools. In fact the later edition, the silver book, is possibly the best bet for you as a start. Great images and the text in intelligible. Not always a given in this field The earlier edition is still pretty good too. And go to the DTI and get tsuba indigestion. Good luck Ford

I recommend Marcus.

Curran, the kogai Dirk posted to looks like a shakudo spliced with silver to me. It's worth baring in mind that some of the lower quality shakudo type alloys are not quite a good solid black either. But until we have actual analyses of these items we can only be guessing. Nickle is pretty much absent from pre-industrial Japanese alloys and where it is detected it's only the barest trace typically around 100th of a percent. Nigurome is the starting alloy for making shakudo. It's an artificial alloy made of copper and shiromé, the byproduct of the de-silverisation of raw copper. It's main constituent is arsenic with smaller amounts of lead and silver. You know it as yamagane. Kuro-shibuichi is shibuichi with added shakudo to darken it. What Mr Ito seems to be describing, and I don't know if he has analyses to support this description, can't be considered a variety of shibuichi I feel. But this discussion highlights the need for much more scientific analysis of these pieces so that proper classifications can be made in terms of nomenclature. These compositional analyses may also enable us to begin to form a sort of chronology akin to dendrochronology. Trace metals and particular ratios of elements reveal quite a lot in fact. But I don't want to publish the fruits of my research here just yet

Thanks for those additions, Dirk. Perhaps an actual 17th century shibuichi kogai or kozuka exists. So far they're somewhat elusive though

Thanks Dirk. I'll send Mr Ito a copy of my book then

Thanks Dirk, those are intriguing details which I'll have to look into carefully now. :-) The Gowland text you posted is well known to me but I've yet to see the two items he mentions. Does anyone know if they're published? And the earlist piece I'm pretty certain about is in fact a tsuba by Nishigaki II, the moon reflected in paddy fields piece. As for the kuro-shibuichi, where does that description come from? Copper and arsenic (added as shiromé) is essentially niguromé.

Nothing for me to add. :-) Modern work, quite tidy but probably not lacquered merely patinated very cleanly. If it was lacquered you'd see the layers on the edge of the nakago-ana where there is fresh filing, as Barry points out. I wonder if it might simply have been spray painted though....a bit of automotive repair work to match the other patinated metal fittings. The colour does look very 'plastic'

Hi Curran I had noted those silvery/gun-metal looking tachi mountings, many of which are 14 and 15th century. But as you point out, they don't really appear to be shibuichi. I'm not aware of any analyses of these tachi fittings as yet but silver was not at all plentiful in those periods so we may be looking at silver plated copper. Murcury gilding and silvering was well established by the mid 8th century. Personally I lean towards another contender that was commonplace in pre-Edo Japan, the high tin bronze known as Hakudo or sahari.

Hi Steve thanks so much for that input. I have in fact been looking closely at Goto work. One might expect that if anyone one was using shibuichi early on it might have been them. On the other hand they demonstrated a remarkable tenacity to resist change for 18 generations also But in the absence of a reliable analysis and verifiable attribution (and thereby date) I can't accept this example. All will be made clear and it's importance explained shortly

Hello George I hope I don't appear to be a killjoy but the point of my exercise here is to challenge much of the accepted 'wisdom' and to properly examin the evidence. I will, in this case, cite Marcus Sesko's excellent compilation " The Japanese Toso-kinko Schools" " There are no signed works extant by the first generation Sōyo...." And I agree with you, the kao appears to be that of the second Soyō, 3rd generation Yokoya master, b 1700 You're absolutely right to suggest that the Yokoya might be a starting point for shiubuichi considering that they were the originators of the machibori movement, so to speak. In reality, though, the breakaway from the classical/authorised styles took about 100 years and only really gets momentum around the start of the 1700's.

Hi Pete thanks for that. I've got the book here but have to say they look like shakudo to me. I can't claim to remember them but I did in fact see this collection when Patrick Syz put in on. Misumi Koji