rkg

Another option is to just make a new liner - I know Ford had an article up on this, but weren't there a few others out there? I probably have something squirreled away, but.... Best, rkg (Richard George)

And here are the bidding results: Best, rkg (Richard George)

I am late to the thread, as usual. Nice looking piece, Congratulations on the results! Best, rkg (Richard George)

Is the surface really that grey color? If so, that and the alternating coarse surface corrosion and the not really well defined seppa zuri makes me think it might have been burned at some point and the smooth surface might be scale. That does appear to be an early hitsu, though its hard to say if it is original to the piece or added later. From the thickness, I would guess its pre-edo, though kozuka came on the scene fairly late, so if original sometime at the end of the muromachi/ or momoyama might be a better date for the piece. On the other hand, older pieces often were flat on one side and "worked" on the other like you are describing, though typically the mimi is thinner than the seppa dai area on pieces that show that. But hey, they're all individuals at that point, so... Best, rkg (Richard George)

Does anybody have any idea what that tanto sized tsuba with the base attached that Dale posted might have been used for? I was trying to figure it out, and can't: https://www.jauce.com/auction/b1113231328 thx, rkg (Richard George)

Mauro, Here's a better image of the piece: Best, rkg (Richard George)

Peter, Fantasy design = mon I guess... The NBTHK most recently called the piece a tachishi, but its stranger than that - the tsuba is shaped like a 4 lobed mokko tachi tsuba (has that "waist" thing going on where the mune side of the tsuba is wider than the edge side), but has an ubu kozuka ana (and the decorations are meant to be viewed with the blade edge facing upward). Thanks to everybody who replied to this fruitful discussion. Best, rkg (Richard George)

Hi, I am trying to write up a description of a tsuba (no small task when you're hopped up on interesting chemicals) and I am having trouble trying to figure out what one of the decorations on the tsuba is. Does anybody recognize what mon/plant this is? A pal suggested it might be a tachibana plant, but I am unsure/seems like they normally show the fruit bigger. Thanks in advance for any help, rkg (Richard George)

Luca, No problem on the dimensions. I put up a description of the piece on Rich Turner's old kodogu no sekai FB page that I seem to have inherited. The papers are buried at the bottom of one of my safes under a large stack of tsuba boxes and it might take a while to get to them, so I'll have to get you some scans of those later. https://www.facebook...t=a.3953650578023594 And for those FB haters here's the description from the album: Mukade (百足) themed Myochin (明珍) tsuba I photographed this piece back in 2014 and was happy to purchase it when it recently became available. This otafuku gata (お多福形, oblong spindle shaped) tsuba is made from iron and measures 89.4mm (H) X 72.64mm (W) X 4.06mm (T,nakago ana), 5.33mm (T, max, mimi). It weighs 137.9g The tsuba has an uchikaeshi mimi (打返耳,upset edge) in which prominent tekkotsu (鉄骨, iron bones) are visible. The surface is very dark (which appears to be due to a combination of lacquer and finishing) and is decorated with mukade (百足, millipede (or ishimukade -石百足,stone centipede)). I think its pretty cool how they appear to “rise up” out of the piece (particularly on the back side). The age is hard to judge because the surface seems very well taken care of (and is waxed), but from the quality of work and large amount of arsenic that seems to have leached from the lead hitsu ana plugs, it appears to be fairly old, and I would date it to the early Edo period (17th Century). The piece has papers from several different groups, all attributing it to the Myouchin (明珍) group of tsuba makers. Best, rkg (Richard George)

Since the topic of Nobuie/Myouchin mukade themed tsuba has come up.... Here's one of those pieces that I had been trying to acquire for a really long time and finally got to a couple of years ago - its mumei and came with a stack of papers to Myouchin - I guess a former owner was trying for a Nobuie attribution or something... The back might actually be my favorite part because its pretty surreal (and yeah, I think there are two mukade there - the one on the bottom is pretty abstract) - the metal work reminds me a lot of a not-like-the-others Nobuie that I think is my favorite tsuba ever, but I digress. Aw, what the heck... I'll stick in an image of it anyway (the rocks/waves effect in hand is just brilliant) - apologies if this is too far off-topic: Best, rkg (Richard George) EDIT: no, I don't think mine is -really- a nobuie, its just really really cool to me...

Dale, That modification is not ideal, but it is what it is. The Japanese seemed to be pretty pragmatic about modifying kodogu to suit whatever their current need happened to be. Changing the shape like that is more extreme than say punching kozuka/kogai ana into pieces that didn't originally have them, but pieces with added hitsu are generally still considered to have value (though not as much as an equivalent piece that didn't have added hitsu). Sometimes buying modified pieces are the only way somebody on a budget can own an example w/o it being a complete wreck. I've had a couple of Ounin tsuba that were modified - one was reduced in diameter (which I won't post an image of out of deference to the new owner), and this one was made into a mokko shape: and here's an old heianjou where the owner modified the shape by adding an oval fukurin mimi in addition to the diameter probably having been reduced some (as well as having the more typical modification of an added kozuka hitsu): And I was just going to get back to work on editing a description of a Juyo kogai naoshi, so clearly the powers that be believe some modified pieces do have historic value... Best, rkg (Richard George)

Maybe the Sotheby's copy writer got a little overly enthusiastic But seriously, I wonder where the source of the story about shingen tsuba came from/was first recorded. As collectors we take so much of this as gospel w/o really knowing where the reference came from... Best, rkg (Richard George)

Dale, Lemonade from lemons time.... It might be worth keeping as a "don't buy one like this kids" warning or as a study piece - have you tried looking at the surface where the fractures occurred with a microscope yet? You could also have it analyzed or put it on the grinder and see what the sparks say about the material Best, rkg (Richard George)

Dale, Yup - that piece is mine - used with permission by Luca in his article. Best, rkg (Richard George)

Hi, I did a quick check on Haynes, and there was only one yanagawa guy that signed this way, so I think its this one: your mei pic is kind of blurry, but it doesn't look particularly close to the reference ones to me - but That observation is probably worth what you paid for it - you can compare it to the piece in hand and see what you think. There are several mid-late Edo kinko that seemed to attract Really Good forgers - an example of this would be (ichinomiya) Nagatsune. There are a tremendous number of pieces that his gimei on them, and a lot of those mei are really really close to "known good" ones. I have no idea if it was a financial/fraud thing or if it was one of those objects every important family "had" to have an example of, but... Best, rkg (Richard George)

Luca, I would think it would be binned as heianjou zougan, but... could it be binned Washida work instead? (I think i've only ever seen one washida group piece in person in hand so I'm not the best to comment on that). That said, its not a terrible piece - the inlayer put on a lot of inlay, it has a couple of different types of inlay metal, the amount of missing inlay appears to be below the 10% threshold that is considered acceptable, and... the surface is actually in pretty good shape, but yeah, the final price seems kind of er, enthusiastic compared to what other similar pieces have gone for on YJ in the past. But that has also been happening a lot lately on a surprising number of pieces coming through Yahoo!Japan of late for whatever reason - there's been a LOT of overly enthusiastic bidding on unpapered (when they "should" be), not in mint condition, etc machibori pieces for example. And the winners are usually gaijin so take that for whatever its worth... Overly enthusiastic bidding? Lack of top end material out there being made available to buy? some other reason? Best, rkg (Richard George)

I hate it when I run into these. Has anyone ever done a book or other compilation of kao by makers who were known sign (occasionally?) with just a kao? Best, rkg (Richard George)

This is a useful set, and there is an index or table of contents translation floating around. I think the pieces in Wakayama's kodogu 3 volume mei set (several of which have popped up lately on YJ, FWIW) is cross referenced to these too (or was it the other way around - too early in the morning (for me) to recall right now) Best, rkg (Richard George)

Brian, you could start by looking for comps on Yahoo!Japan maybe? There is a tremendous number of sales of fittings through that site, and would give you an idea of the "spot" price since the items actually sold (except when the seller decides he doesn't like the price, but that's a yahoo!Japan foible...) for example, I don't know how this set compares to the set above (the YJ one was actually pretty good/better than the ones shown perhaps), but here's a set that is along the lines of the one your pal has: https://www.sendico....hoo/item/q1096115829 https://page.auction.../auction/q1096115829 Just start putting similar things to what you want to value on your watch list and see where they end up. Good Luck - valuing stuff in thin markets is no joy. Best, rkg (Richard George)

David, Are you talking about the "red dot" pieces? I am not certain of the age of that collection (I don't know if its as early as meiji or if its later), but Bruce K. bought all the documentation related to that set a number of years ago off of yahoo!Japan (amazing what shows up there sometimes). In a momentary fit of weakness, he let me snap images of the pages where a tsuba I have from that collection + the cover off of one of the volumes: Maybe somebody out there will recognize the stamps so we might have a clue who put the collection together. Best, rkg (Richard George)

Brown waxed? Best, rkg (Richard George)

Haon, Period Tachi are few and far between, and as you point out, many of the extant ones were "special"/not for use. While I am sure there have been better special exhibitions put together at some point, the best collection I've seen of tachi (and actually armor as well) that actually saw use are at the Ōyamazumi Shrine on the island of Ōmishima in the Seto Inland Sea. The place is somewhat unique in that individuals in armies returning from battle would go there and gift the swords/armor they actually used in the battle they had just participated in as offerings. A lot of the items are not in the best of condition, but at least stuff like Nambokucho period nerikawa tsuba were still threaded on the blade, etc. so you can see what was supposed to have been there. At some point in the distant past there was a writeup by Jim Gilbert outlining his experiences there/had a few scans from the museum's book (I took no images in the museum when I was there - they get real mad if you do/go so far as to watch visitors on camera to make sure they don't - but I digress), etc, but the article seems to have vanished from the web. Best, rkg (Richard George)

Jimi-san, I always seem to be late to the party on these. Apologies in advance if the following sounds addled - I'm still not feeling that great, so... First off, be glad you are doing this now rather than in the bad old days when everybody had CRT monitors - they could be all over the place in terms of color temperature, gamma settings, intensity, etc., and worse yet everybody was convinced their monitors were perfect so it was a losing proposition to even try and have a conversation about what they saw on their monitor (diatribe about hours wasted trying to convince people who had no idea about color management/monitor calibration/etc that their monitor might be off omitted - suffice to say I just started always printing proofs to send after that). While people still do odd adjustments, its much less common now, so you -could- talk about lighting the images so you still can get a feeling for what the piece looks like I think. Probably the simplest way to model it would be to think of it as a limited color space where you have to reduce the contrast/dynamic range and probably a reduced range of colors as well (though fortunately, you may not run into that often) - and if you light accordingly (reduce the overall contrast /dynamic range of the image) you can probably get a good result, though that is a little unsatisfying as a photographer as using a large dynamic range lets you show more. Again there are books on color management that describe in gory detail all the problems with trying to get what you see on a monitor to match the item. About all you can do is make -your- colors as accurate as possible. I personally pretty much do a unique color profile for -every- image I care about, though you -can- just measure your typical lighting and apply that profile in to groups of images. If nothing else, you -can- put a target somewhere in the image space and just do a white balance adjustment to it. I have become a big fan of these little step wedges, as you can use the gray to set your lighting intensity, and the white to do a white balance adjustment, and... they have a scale too (although it looks like they no longer run it down one side unfortunately) https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/286667-REG/QP_Card_GQP101_Qp_Calibration_Card_101.html For actual profile generation I use a calbrite colorchecker. I prefer using some kind of profile generation like this as it allows you to dial out many problems with the sensor/what adobe decided to add to their camera profile, etc - I started doing this waaay back when I was shooting with a 5D mkII as canon had messsed with the reds in a way that was almost impossible to dial out manually. https://calibrite.com/us/product/colorchecker-passport-duo/ (note that they got little un's Bigger 'uns, part of a kit with a monitor calibrator (another good thing for you to look into), etc.). But that's all a huge digression, as you were asking about your images. The front one looks like it could stand to either have the contrast reduced (shadows lighter) or you need to spend some time adding lighting to "shape" the badger and frog - I'm not sure what you wanted to show there - the back seems to reveal most everything, though if you are working on lighting the front the fish on the back might also be improved (the face on the fish is kind of cool and not emphasized) But even then you have to watch doing that too much because in hand its actually hard to see everything at once (and that can lead to unhappy buyers since they generally do not have optimal lighting) - I'll often take a lot of pictures rotating the piece through identical light. I assume you shot these under somewhat identical light, so the color difference is there, correct? This actually is not that uncommon on kinko work, fwiw - I've always assumed it had to do with one side being "protected" by the otoshi and the other being on display, but what do I know. Best, rkg (Richard George)

Washida school work would be my guess. Nice piece. Best, rkg (Richard George)