rkg

I've just put up several more in case anybody's interested. Thx, rkg (Richard George)

Now that I have your attention... :-) In case anybody's interested, I've been experimenting with making videos of swords/tosogu and have started putting some of the results on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUvQbO4lhBeX11TERNMJAmQ be sure to set your options to 1080 - youtube compresses the snot of everything to begin with, and these look pretty fuzzy at some of the lower resolution settings.... I'll put up more if there's interest. Enjoy, rkg (Richard George)

Robert, Yeah, that was recommended earlier in this thread/elsewhere, but I did some testing with some scratch pens at the beginning of the year and found you have to be Really Really careful or you scarf up the patina. I posted the results of what I tried here: https://www.facebook.com/pg/Kod%C3%B4gu-no-Sekai-%E5%B0%8F%E9%81%93%E5%85%B7%E3%81%AE%E4%B8%96%E7%95%8C-266005023454853/photos/?tab=album&album_id=1224333120955367 https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=1225107050877974&id=266005023454853 I think they'd be useful where you get those little "mountains" of rust or on a piece or were the patina is hopeless anyway (they do a number on fire scale for example), but working around inlays and or where a piece is in otherwise good shape and you want the cleaned area to match the existing patina... not so much... But then again I'm more picky than a lot of people, so YMMV.... rkg (Richard George)

I'd guess (very) late edo or newly made. rkg (Richard George)

OK, one more stupid question - do any of you people arrange your transport to/from the airport in advance? I'm worried about what happens when your plane is late - in order to get in at a reasonable time I ended up signing up for a delta flight, and I've had dismal luck with them being on time, and.. https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10204139833794957&set=p.10204139833794957&type=1&theater Thanks, rkg (Richard George)

the piece looks burned :-) rkg (Richard George)

John, I've seen all kinds of crazy stuff - thin layer more or less wrapped around the copper core, a cup the yamagane core fit in with a plate pushed into the top, clever sanmai where you can't see where the fukurin begins, etc - often the outer pieces are soldered to the inner core, but now always - I'm sure there are others... note that even then the outer layer may just be a slightly better grade of copper that will actually take patination over that yamagane/bronze core - its been pointed out to me that there is a fair amount fewer real shakkudo pieces than you think :-/ Best, rkg (Richard George)

Yeah, that's easy enough to do if you have the images... Best, rkg

Ken, Thanks for the comments. I have various sliders/rails, etc, but they weren't used in this case - this was a digital pan through a single image that was what, about 8200 pixels wide... In the past I have done a bunch of testing trying to get all the possible detail to show up in a video when physically doing a slide of a camera across a blade, but I could never get it to work very well (no doubt a combination of things - codec/compression issues, motion blur, stray vibrations,, etc - the image was sharp as it could be when still, but when motion began, yuk...) - I think you probably would need a rail you could micro-step, take stills, and combine those in post into video to get that to work, but this is better for me - you just need a painfully high resolution image to begin with (and that I can do...). Agreed on the size - 4K video is big - I guess I should have clarified that I was talking about was the resulting video from the tool - at its highest (least compressed) output resolution, the files were 10X or more larger, and... Best, rkg (Richard George)

Hey guys, This year I decided it might be good to bring along a decent sized monitor to the Chicago show in order to show some of my work. It gave me an opportunity to play around some with how to display images/pieces. I had been thinking for a while that some kind of "panning" image would be a cool way to show off sword details, but gave up on using video for this a while back as motion blur obliterates the fine details. The video below is panned though a fixed image. The interesting thing is that the more resolution/stuff you can see, the slower you have to pan to keep the "motion blur" (which it isn't in this case - I think it has to do with the monitor's refresh rate/pixel size) so it isn't objectionable when viewed full size (its 1080). you can hit the space bar while its running and see the "actual" resolution - it "jumps" into sharpness when stopped). I also found I had to use the tool's "extreme resolution" to get it to look this good = huge files, but hey... Whaddya think? http://www.rkgphotos.com/facebook_stuff/osoraku_test.mp4 Best, rkg (Richard George)

Hi, I hate it when I come late to the party... I have a number of magnifying glasses, and when that ain't enough I pull out the microscope (its amazing what you can discern with a decent stereo one - stuff just leaps out at you in a way you can't see in a 2-D image, but I digress) - I got lucky enough to find a unit with a 2.5X objective and a nifty stage that slides/rotates - cool for getting up close and personal with tosogu :-) Another cool thing are these: http://www.doneganoptical.com/products/optivisor Its good because you then can have both hands free. Yet another option that I haven't tried (because they cost a small fortune) are those custom magnifying glasses that surgeons/dentists, etc use as they will tweak magnification, focal distance, etc to what you want so you can effectively be several feet away and its both magnified and in focus... for swords I actually normally just photograph them for close-up study like you're suggesting - I'm not a big fan of getting close enough to spit on 'em either... For looking at stuff in display cases, the Japanese do use monoculars - Wasn't there a thread on here in the distant past about this? you need one that can close-focus, which isn't cheep (and actually, it might be better to re-survey as high end optics just keep getting better and better...). I have some small soviet monocular for this, but I"m not even sure where it is now.... I normally carry a light too - the ability to have both a point source as well as a "flood" and variable power (from dim to small sun mode) is good - I normally just use a higher end headlamp (gives you a plethora of lighting modes (point, multiple LEDs, lots of power adjustment, etc) like this, though I think they've discontinued these: https://www.rei.com/product/866384/black-diamond-storm-headlamp I really wish when museums display tosogu they would "get" that pretty much everybody who is interested ends up having to use a light/some kind of magnifier to look at the pieces (or at the very least end up with their nose pressed to the glass trying to make out details), and either 1) make it easy to get close to the piece (that earlier post with tsuba held in a matrix was brilliant) and/or 2) provide magnification/different lighting modes either in real time or with a projector/screen next to the pieces, but that's just me. rkg (Richard George)

Johnny, This is kind of a popular theme - could be saotome, though Thierry's comment about it being Myochin would probably be the best guess - Saotome work often had those ridges around the sukashi that were a byproduct of how they cut the sukashi. Here's a similar piece I have that was attributed to early saotome work by Torigoye that shows this: https://www.facebook.com/pg/Kod%C3%B4gu-no-Sekai-%E5%B0%8F%E9%81%93%E5%85%B7%E3%81%AE%E4%B8%96%E7%95%8C-266005023454853/photos/?tab=album&album_id=1065621873493160 spinny_pics, er, uh, 360 degree view - Note that this was before I spent 5 minutes rubbing it with a cloth - that gunk is gone now (it looked like somebody had recently mounted it/used it for iai or something): http://www.rkgphotos.com/facebook_stuff/torigoye_saotome/fan_saotome_torigoye_front/fan_saotome_torigoye.html http://www.rkgphotos.com/facebook_stuff/torigoye_saotome/fan_saotome_torigoye_back/fan_saotome_torigoye_back.html Best, rkg

I currently have a tempo like that I'm trying to salvage - it was a "bad pic" buy off of yahoo Japan - sometimes you make out ok, other times you get a piece that it looks like somebody slopped black enamel paint on, then black waxed it, and then.. The paint on your piece isn't old, right? even if it looks a little funky, if the lacquer is old you have to think twice about pulling it off... But I digress... I started out with alcohol, got a bunch of black stuff (I assume was black wax - acted like it) off, then switched to the stripper you can get anywhere - it did a bang-up job getting the stuff off the broad areas, but down in the stamps/pores/indentations... Not So much. Then I got busy/injured again so I haven't gotten back to it/dug out the lacquer thinner/tried hunting down some aircraft stripper, etc. Good Luck, rkg (Richard George)

Thanks for all the replies on this! Best, rkg (Richard George)

How much of an additional hassle is it to get to the show from Midway instead of o'hare? As I'd like to bring a couple of bags/would like to get to Chicago before the middle of the night w/o having to sell a kidney and/or take a redye, so I'm thinking of taking Southwest, and.... Thx, rkg (Richard George)

Matt, I'm not sure who made the first one - there's a number of edo groups that made pieces like that (and I don't study them so much...). The second and third if they're old could possibly be put in the katchushi and tosho bins respectively, though I think they're too thick, etc to be pre-edo. And actually #2 might be assigned to some other nebulous group designation (higo?) I don't know about #4 either - could be one or more of cast, burned, low quality, etc. if real I'd probably call it some kind of owari piece from the edo period (because of the style/decoration - they loved those birds...). And I think Grey's right on the last one - some kind of heianjo zogan, though honestly, its a rusty wreck. FWIW, at this stage, you'd be well advised to go look at some good examples of tsuba in hand before buying any more. Much as I would normally recommend books, for newbies there aren't lot of books to recommend (IMHO) as most are kind of aimed at people who already know what they are looking at - there are no oblique views, etc to help you "get" the pieces. I keep thinking it would be cool to do an e-book for the uninitiated so you could zoom waaay in on the images to see fine details, include VR image sets, microphotographs, etc to try and really show all aspects of a piece, kinda like I did for this piece: https://www.facebook.com/266005023454853/photos/?tab=album&album_id=1061310870590927 http://www.rkgphotos.com/facebook_stuff/kiku_satome/kiku_saotome_front/kiku_saotome_front.html http://www.rkgphotos.com/facebook_stuff/kiku_satome/kiku_saotome_back/kiku_saotome_back.html But I digress... That said, there actually are a lot of "cheep and cheerful" tsuba out there, though you kind of have know what makes a good piece first. Best, rkg (Richard George)

Luka, Pieces put in the Heianjo bin were made by a lot of different people over a long period time, and you see variations in the way the pieces were put in like this - sometimes you see just a groove, sometimes you see "punch marks" along where the inlay is, etc - I don't know if this is an age thing (the earlier guys used the punch marks to hold the inlay on and the later guys didn't), or if it is a technique variation between the various makers whose pieces get dumped in this bin (or a little of both). On the "missing"inlay... I had the privilege of shooting an early heianjo piece that had very little wear ( it was in the 2013 KTK catalog), and had a very overt Christian symbol on it so it would not have been used much after the Shimabara rebellion (unless the owner had a death wish, of course) - what, ~1638. The first thing I noted was that the edges were sharp/caught on any kind of fabric (it like it stuck to my glove when I was studying it/trying to figure out the lighting for it). So in addition to the "usual suspects" (inlay fell out due to damage/corrosion, excessive wear, etc), I was thinking that some of it could possibly have gotten pulled out because it would catch on -anything-/. I also had to wonder if the losses had anything to do with the owners pulling it off deliberately because they got tired of their clothing getting ripped up. In addition, even this piece had a surprising amount of inlay missing - one bit was probably due to corrosion, but the rest.... not so much. Since then I've seen a number of pieces that are in -excellent- condition/were obviously valued and cared for, yet they still show areas of missing inlays, etc - like this piece: https://www.facebook.com/266005023454853/photos/?tab=album&album_id=1022965847758763 http://www.rkgphotos.com/facebook_stuff/kiku_heianjo/kiku_heianjo_front/kiku_heianjo_front.html Going one step further, here's a piece that appears to have been made with inlay grooves that were either never filled or large areas of the inlay were were removed for some reason (the surface does not seem to have damage consistent with it all falling off) https://www.facebook.com/266005023454853/photos/?tab=album&album_id=1175352412520105 http://www.rkgphotos.com/facebook_stuff/wheel_heianjo_front/kiku_heianjo_back.html While I'm not sure the piece above should be put in the "heianjo" bin (what, aizu shoami maybe?), you get the idea. And here's a piece that would get put in the Heianjo bin with its inlay looong gone, but its been mounted and remounted again and again/was obviously valued by its owners: https://www.facebook.com/266005023454853/photos/?tab=album&album_id=960037920718223 This had led me to start thinking that in the cases where the pieces obviously aren't rusty wrecks these losses are either tolerated or maybe even deliberately done/ and/or were "encouraged" as an aesthetic thing (think wabi sabi). There is some evidence to support this supposition in the way advanced Japanese collectors regard these pieces. I had the privilege of shooting a juyo onin tsuba which had "considerable losses" (KTK 2016) - which was an eye-opener about the Japanese sense of aesthetics WRT these pieces/started me wondering if maybe this was viewed an aesthetic "thing". I also talked to Bob Haynes about this, and his observation was that the Japanese collecting community back in the day considered heianjo/Onin pieces with up to ~10% losses (with no big pieces of inlay missing) as being "acceptable". It seems to speak to the larger, almost Schizophrenic bifurcation in the Japanese aesthetic, where Perfect/Perfect pieces are highly valued, as are worn things.... Best, rkg (Richard George)

This is again the "bin" problem - pieces attributed to katchushi tend to be thinner than pieces called tosho (plus the tosho pieces sometimes thin from the seppa to the mimi), and often have the mimi raised in several ways, but they also sometimes stick tsuba with no raised mimi into the katchushi bin if there is enough sukashi in the decoration. On the other hand, for this piece, I don't really know where it should go - it seems to have a slightly raised mimi as well as amida yasuri (?) - probably explains the nebulous name he used (ko-sukashi). I'm not sure I'd buy the age he lists, but maybe that's just me. rkg (Richard George)

Arnold makes a good point about considering the losses (or lack of return) as a rent to enjoy/study the items. I know people that are tortured when they look at their current collection - they have items that they paid a LOT more back in the day (for a number of reasons - the bear market in swords/fittings, paying too much in the first place for any one of a number of reasons (lack of knowledge, misplaced trust, fraud, being "Duveened", etc)), and they therefore find it almost impossible for them to sell the pieces they'd like to deaccession at the current market price and move on. Hard to watch sometimes. rkg (Richard George)

Peter, As always with art, you should buy what you like as there is no guarantee on what the next buyer will be willing to pay for it - that said... FWIW, I actually think we are seeing a "bear market" in both, and would posit its a secular trend for both tosogu and swords. Weapons in general are becoming increasingly politically incorrect everywhere, and its not just the swords. For example, in my home state it will be illegal in a few months to buy or sell koshirae/tosogu with rayskin/sharkskin, etc on them unless they have some nebulous certificate that the item an antique ( and just to make it more fun, the law as near as I can tell doesn't specify where or how to get these/fund a governmental organ to generate them, etc but I digress). Oh, and by the way, you can only do that if the total amount of material is less than couple of hundred grams - so much for ever owning one of those whizzy same covered koshirae I get wanting to save what few dangerous or delicious animals are left, and if they wanted to be ethically consistent they should either exempt all the old stuff, or send -everything- through the "you can't sell it anymore unless you deface it" grinder, but I digress again.... On top of that, its not clear to me that there are a whole lot of new collectors of either (though I am surprised how many people look at the images I post to the kodogu no sekai facebook page). Particularly for swords. Not a whole lot of millennials out there that can cough up the $5-10K US that even low end decent pieces cost, and God help you if you've got an itch for anything that the books call "good"... And women in general don't like weapons, so swords (and to a lesser extent tosogu) don't have much appeal to the "power couple collector" crowd who seem to snap up anything that's exclusive and expensive that have been driving up prices in so many other art/antiques. And also with swords, generally "the best" work of any era can be interesting, and it just so happened that a lot of gendai work was underpriced for a while - I'm not so sure it still is, but.. I don't buy and sell many swords anymore (got tired of losing money), but it seems like the market for the "good stuff" is a mess - it appears that anything that isn't a "good luck finding one of those" items is cheeper now than it used to be. And you can find many threads on the Japanese market, the Juyo fiasco, etc. While tosogu are much easier to deal with (as you have pointed out, though good luck with trying to get a kozuka/kogai onto an airplane and issues with moving -anything- around worth more than $2500 across borders for a number of reasons), the prices fluctuate a lot, with the trend being down overall I think - and they seem to suffer from real "fashion" problems (things get "hot" and then later "not") and therefore the prices can fluctuate (ask any poor sod who paid thousands for run of the mill Kaneyama or akasaka piece back in the day that you can now buy all day for a few hundred bucks - and don't get me started on menuki...). Again, unless you -want- to deal and keep track of/profit from all these little fleeting trends, you would probably be best buying what you love and writing the cost off like a weekend in Vegas... my .02... Best, rkg (Richard George)

Wah, That is interesting. Thanks for the information! Since this piece was dated October 1977 I wonder if it was made from this new iron or not. No doubt no way to know, but... Best, rkg (Richard George)

Yeah, I really couldn't see that in the pics from the seller until I got it in hand and knew to look for it - I was kind of upset about that, as it shows up just fine in my images of the piece. Here's a comparison where I shot it two different ways downsized to match the seller's images - in theirs, it looked to me like the scuffing you see sometimes... Please forgive the dust and bad knockouts, these were both test images - mine are on the left, the one from the dealer is on the right: http://www.rkgphotos.com/facebook_stuff/yasuaki_compare.jpg I've had to kind of replicate the kind of lighting they used before to downplay polish issues/scuffs/etc on a piece that somebody wanted to display a large image of (you also have to use something similar on sashikomi polishes sometimes, but I digress). I jokingly call it "dealer lighting", though it just occurred to me that maybe a more accurate term is "kesso lighting" :-) In any case, the piece is really impressive in hand - I'm afraid to guess what a 30.something inch hosho piece that wasn't mostly ground away or flawed badly (its almost impossible to make a piece like that without some kind of loose grain somewhere) would cost - it'd probably be better, but.... Best, rkg

Greg, Buying shinsakuto is like buying any other contemporary art - you'd better be buying it because you like it, because chances are you're not going to get what you paid in the secondary market when you go to sell. In fact, its kind of insane to buy them new (except as a tchotchke), as they almost always lose a LOT of value (kinda like buying a new car). You can try and surf the vagaries of what makers/styles are currently in vogue, try to play the "who's gonna go mukansa" game, etc., but... That said, yeah, it seems like pieces from the '70s are pretty inexpensive (relatively speaking) - and if you want to save even more (at the cost of difficulty in selling later), you can look for pieces that have personal dedications on them - I've been told the Japanese HATE these, and that is reflected in their pricing - but hey, if you're buying it because you like it.... Plus, it is nice not to have to worry so much about preserving history when you study the piece (not that anybody would deliberately abuse a piece, but you don't cry in your beer like you would if you dropped a Shizu...), and you can get some pretty nice work for the cost of a middling pre/during war gendaito (which leaves more in the fund to buy fittings :-) ): Obligatory image: http://www.rkgphotos.com/facebook_stuff/yasuaki2_single_shot_sim.jpg Best, rkg (Richard George)

Hey guys, One of the few advantages of being laid up is that I actually get to read some of these boards/have a chance to maybe add something to these discussions... In response to Steve's original posting.... It always seems like restoration is a difficult undertaking as the whole definition is somewhat subjective (to whose aesthetic/standard are you "restoring" something), subject to the hubris of the restorer, and is sometimes done with imperfect information - one only has to look at the controversy surrounding the Sistine Chapel ceiling restoration to have doubts raised about whether or not these "experts" really know what they're doing - did they make it more beautiful/conserve it for future generations, or did they destroy half of Michelangelo's work by removing the toning he probably put in with the varnish, expose the pigments un-necessarily to damage, etc... Well, now that they've done it we'll probably never know who was right... But in their defense, they had to do -something- at the time, so... But that's kind of preachy - back to the smaller case of fittings. In the case of iron fittings, we will probably never know what they originally looked like - and really, depending on your aesthetic "religion" (western/merchant/Daimyo? "its gotta be perfect" taste, "tea taste"/wabi sabi aesthetic where things are what they are/are repaired so they can continue to be used and no more (often with the repairs being celebrated), etc), it may not matter. And, unfortunately also like religion, both viewpoints can be right - with each endlessly belittling the other for being "wrong" - which is where the subjective part comes in - while the piece is in your possession you do what you gotta do. And also like religion, each point of view is something you end up picking up - the more I study, the more I am attracted to the wabi sabi aesthetic, so my world view is colored by that. I find it horrific/an example of hubris on the part of the owner when you see things like juyo grade tosogu stripped/inlay removed, etc and then refinished to the owner's liking (and its not just gaijin that do this so I'm singling anybody out), but clearly the owner didn't - so which of us is right? I'd posit that its an issue that really has no absolutely correct answer. A botched (IMHO) restoration like the (many) tsuba you see where they have stolen the piece's age (can no longer really tell tell if the piece is really hundreds of years old or made last week by tsubako Bob), or (IMHO) ineptly executed work (brown/black/red wax, selenium based patinating solutions that stink, etc.,), drive me nuts, but other people don't notice/care,so... And if nobody can tell the piece was repaired... You lose information by fixing them, but who am I to tell somebody else what they are doing is wrong. And its not like you can -really- go back into Japanese history to get a definitive answer either, as it appears that both (wabi-sabi vs. new/made(or remade) perfect) co-existed for a long time... I personally started thinking a lot more about this imperfect as perfect thing while photographing a juyo onin piece that had a surprising number of losses - Looking around more, I started finding examples of pieces in Japan that were really well cared for that had considerable losses (and in one case a heianjo piece that obviously was not used for for long time (overt Christian symbolism so no way it was used after the early 1600s unless the owner had a death wish) ) and it began to occur to me that the losses were part of the aesthetic... (onin piece 2016 KTK catalog, Christian piece ktk 2013 catalog, examples of heianjo were losses don't really seem to match condition (you'd think the losses would have been "fixed")) http://www.rkgphotos.com/facebook_stuff/kiku_heianjo/kiku_heianjo_front/kiku_heianjo_front.html http://www.rkgphotos.com/facebook_stuff/wheel_heianjo_front/kiku_heianjo_back.html (sprials were either never there or deliberately removed) ) - I later come to find out that in this specific case, some small percentage of losses is considered "acceptable" by the Grading Gods... On the other hand, like the guy in Blade Runner said "I've seen things you people wouldn't believe" in terms of old pieces being in absolutely perfect condition (they must have either been gifts/unused, or... repaired) - so, who is right? I lost the hubris to believe it has to be my point of view, so... And you can even see this aesthetic "war" being played out in swords - while the aesthetic "demands" that swords remain polished (eventually dooming them) with "problems" either umegane'd out or otherwise "fixed" by the polisher, they end up leaving things like kirikomi.... And then there are the monetary questions.... If perfect was not important, then nowhere near as many tosogu pieces would be getting "tuned up" by professional restorers prior to Juyo submission as there apparently are. On the other hand, fixed is bad as (almost) nobody will actually admit that a piece having been repaired under their watch/a buyer will try to demand a lower price if they find or figure it out - even if the repair is perfect, so.... And then often a piece is highly valued for battle damage, is worn in a way that is attractive to an adherent of the wabi-sabi aesthetic, is old as hell - so you leave things like raggedy mimis, etc as part of the piece's history/help to ascertain the age/usage, etc. Which leads back to Wouter's question - what do you do? From a certain point of view you fix it, from another you don't - from my point of view I'd probably leave it because 1) its not an immediate threat to the piece (like deep rust on an iron piece), and is part of its history (for better or worse). From the "! want it to be perfect" point of view you do. From a monetary point of view, first off, its "bad" to admit to even considering it in public because of the "repair discount" that will be demanded should you go to sell (and people never forget...). In addition, valuable is relative - if you have to spend a significant chunk of what a perfect piece would cost to get that one fixed (top rate repair work (so you can't tell) takes forever/is very expensive), its hard to argue that it should be done. Might make monetary sense if you come across a some over-the-top omori piece signed by the big guy that needs work or a Hanare mei nobuiye that some idiot has depatinated, but in this case.... Get a quote - you might be shocked one way or the other. On the other hand (I must been an economist in a prior life as I seem to have about 20 hands :-) ), maybe it isn't that much if you've a whole suite of pieces/koshirae to consider and this enhances the value of the set considerably... In terms of history, you would be stealing some of it from the piece - I don't like that much (as I have repeatedly ranted in the past), but if you can't tell that it was done, have you really done it? The "pass shinsa" thing is a little specious, as there is a range of repairs that the Grading Gods consider acceptable will paper. On top of that the repair can be so good that an expert can't tell it was done - and again, if you can't tell... Plus, stuff has happened to these things in the past - it got fixed at some point (like patinas on iron pieces), and they are later papered... And, FWIW, you might take some perspective here - go find some top grade versions of these - often when you see "the best" examples, often you realize that even your fixed example will only ever be a middling example - it will make you either happier to leave it as is, convince you that you'll be OK with spending the coin to get yours fixed, or realize that you really want "that grade" of piece and shift you damaged one/save your pennies to get a better example... (and often the cost of "stepping up" isn't that much more than what you'd get for your piece + the repair cost...). Oops, time for more meds.... Best, rkg (Richard George)

Oh man, that would be fun to reshoot rkg (Richard George)