raaay

the ware makes me think it could be , but ?? it does not look right IMHO

sorry the grandad story sounds like BS , I have had this happen a few times in the past phone calls re I have an old sword my grandad brought back from the war for sale, you go and see the item turns out to be a Chinese or Spanish repro sword,

I agree Steven , looks modern ?

yip, sorry it is a very poor quality fake indeed .

Andreas as Geraint says , I have seen these before they are reproduction swords,

And is there a Nobuie style tsuba there also ,top right ??

Hi do search on the board and you will see some previous ivory mounts and blade discussed just a month or two ago.

Sorry , ditto as above 100% fake

anybody living the Uk in the Japanese sword world -will have a very good idea who polished the blade .

wild guess - Nagmitsu ?

sorry, it is a 100% fake , so nothing else you can say about this one .

yip, another lovely Chinese fake , and one new happy owner ,

Sorry , as Grey says, 100% Chinese copy

sorry - it is wishful thinking this is Japanese, IMHO 150% fake

all said already -100% fake

Hi Paul if it is ebony that's fine , the reason I asked is I know someone who used to make shira saya and they used, shall we say a synthetic material for the horn mounts .

hi Paul I am afraid as said already there are a few red flags , but fingers crossed it is still Japanese , one thing to check, see if the shira-saya handle has a horn mount or ??

Steven /Stephen It is a good blade, that was submitted to the 2008 Uk - NTHK -Shinsa , papered with what looks like 100 points on the score sheet, then they scored through the 100 and changed to 70+ points , so my theory is what did they think it was before they changed the score and made there final assessment ?? and I know they do not issue point scores that high outside of Japan ! unfortunately on the day I could not stay for the question and answer sessions after the event to ask why they changed the score. I think this one will be heading to Japan for a polish .

Stephen and one more ,

Hi Stephen yes , not sure if I have posted this before, but here is the blade that came with the Ivory mounts.

As requested, some more photo's of the saya

yes , Steven , i have the saya , there 10 dragons carved all over the tuska and saya diving in and out of the clouds , in fact a small portion of the saya is in the second photo.

Stephen , yes they are, I need to check , but from memory at least 7 dragons!

Malcolm , very interesting as the whole thing is covered in dragons ,I always thought it was maybe a signature, many thanks,

I know not good karma these days to own anything ivory, but it came my way about 15+yrs ago , obviously made around the Meji period, I would suggest circa -1860/1880 !! any idea what the signature may be , supplied both ways not even sure what is the right way up.