rkg

I don't know about that - time is money and this would save a lot of time for anybody who trawls ebay for stuff... rkg

Hey guys, In case anybody's interested, lulu.com is having a 30% off sale - this is about as much of a discount as they -ever- offer, so if you were thinking about buying any of Markus Sesko's books, now would be a good time :-) http://www.lulu.com/home#tackyElf Best, rkg (Richard George)

Hi, That's a tough one. On one hand, unless you've gone over your monthly limit, you can list some number of auctions/month free on ebay, so there's no real cost associated with it unless you sell. On the other hand, there's an art to selling high end swords, and if you eventually end up consigning it, you're tying the dealer's hands WRT price (as the piece will have been recently "shopped around" with a price attached) - so unless they have a clientele who lives under a roc-er, uh, isn't internet active they can't easily "Duveen" anybody in order to get a good price for you/themselves. On the other hand again, as somebody else suggested, you can run the ad with a stupid high price with the "best offer" option (is this free now?) so this contingency is less of a problem - though if you dropped the price when it went on consignment, the potential buyers who saw it on fleabay might smell blood in the water and not act because they're waiting for the price to drop more... Of course, this is all complicated by how difficult swords are to get accurate images of. On top of that, even if you have good images, ebay "fuzzifies" them when you upload them. Unless the seller has a rep/offers super easy returns, few people are going to pony up the big bucks unless they are gambling you have seriously mispriced the piece. Good Luck, rkg (Richard George)

Hi, I got to shoot this earlier in the year, and I have to say its one of the coolest pieces I've ever had the privilege of working with. Liked it so much I ended up re-shooting it when I got a higher resolution camera. Best, rkg (Richard George)

Hey guys, In case anybody's interested, I got the tatsuyoshi osoraku tanto that was for sale on the board not too long ago back from polish. In the course of testing a sword lighting setup to try and meet a client's needs (its the infamous "one last -quick- thing" I had to get done before I could get to shooting items for the 2014 KTK catalog - and as usual the job got messy, but I digress), I shot some images of this piece: http://www.rkgphotos.com/recent_stuff/t ... _final.jpg enjoy, rkg (Richard George)

Ken, Sigh, I guess I just expect too much from trained professionals. (rant deleted) I'd actually have much preferred your situation as its much easier to add light than it its to duck and weave around the display case trying to find an angle where the item isn't either blown out by highlights or obscured by a reflection off the case surface. rkg

We went and saw this tuesday. Pretty nice display/armors, except that all the walls are light colored and had enough stray light bouncing around so it was reflecting off the display cases :-/ Best, rkg (Richard George)

Hey guys, I'm always accused of overpacking when I send nihonto related stuff, but... I just received this package for a pal who is visiting in a couple of weeks - the USPS attached a written apology for how badly damaged the box was - I've never seen that before... http://www.rkgphotos.com/transfer/amble ... G_9001.jpg http://www.rkgphotos.com/transfer/amble ... G_9002.jpg the contents seem to be moving freely around on the inside and the crushed corner looks like it might have got wet too, so I fear the worst but I haven't heard back from the owner on permission to open it and see how bad the innards have been knocked around... Best, rkg (Richard George)

Bob, FWIW, the best value for the beginner is to spend the money you were planning to sink into your first piece into some books and traveling to a sword show or three to see a large number of blades in hand (preferably with somebody along to point out what you are looking at) before buying a piece. Best, rkg (Richard George)

Hey! I have one of these... Just out of curiosity, does it have a showa stamp on it or anything? the pics you have didn't go up to the munemachi, and... I'm still trying to figure the blade I own out - the at arm's length hada looks muji, but there seems to be something there if you look close, the hamon is done in nioi deki, but seems more complex than you normally see if its oil quenched - so, is it traditionally made, traditionally made out of mill steel, oil quenched, or...? Its my "crash test dummy" for lighting setups, so I actually have some images of it (albeit not so good since they're test images) note that the second stamp is actually on the back side of the nakago for some reason: http://www.rkgphotos.com/recent_stuff/t ... etail1.jpg http://www.rkgphotos.com/recent_stuff/t ... o_roth.jpg Please pardon the poor knockout, etc. on the second one.... So, Alan what does the blade your brother found look like to you in hand? A really nice showato, or... Best, rkg (Richard George)

David, It kind of depends on what you want to do with the images. My favorite thing to do with a decent koshirae is photograph the complete koshirae as well as all the pieces like was done for that uchigatana koshirae book by the Tokyo national museum. I think its important because its VERY helpful in understanding the piece, but few people who put these pubs together are willing to spring for either the number of shots required per piece or space in the publication to show all the images, so... Koshirae are a pain to light well because, like fittings, you often don't want to use the same lighting on every piece (what is cool highlight that gives shape on one piece blots out something critical on the next piece, etc), you sometimes need a LOT of grip to show off everything well in one shot, etc. Best, rkg (Richard George)

stephen, I don't know why not - it was actually from an article on urban chicken farmers (of all things - kudos to Darcy Brockbank for finding it), but it seems pretty applicable to a whole lot of stuff going on these days - in case you care, here's a pointer to the article itself: http://www.mnn.com/your-home/organic-fa ... pt=hp_bn18 Best, rkg (Richard George)

Wow... My new byline seems to cover this: "People don't know what they're doing. And you've got this whole culture of people who don't know what the hell they're doing teaching every other idiot out there." Britton Clouse Best, rkg (Richard George)

Fabian, Since I think I managed to make pretty much all of the mistakes possible when I started collecting, I don't think I'd recommend doing what I did when I started to gather information... :-) FWIW, all this talk of buying a shelf of expen$ive books before buying anything else is all well and good, but they really aren't really very helpful in educating you about what you're looking at on a blade until you've seen a bunch of them in hand (though the facts and fundamentals book IMHO is and excellent starting point). So what I'd recommend doing sooner than later is finding a way to look at a large number of (preferably high quality) pieces, preferably with some knowledgeable people to talk to about what you're seeing. The books usually make a LOT more sense after you've seen the activities they are talking about in hand (think read, study pieces, re-read...). The easiest way to do that is often to travel to one or more large sword shows - not inexpensive, but usually cheaper than a starter piece, and you'll possibly get more out of it if you're diligent. Good Luck, rkg (Richard George)

Mike, Maybe not a good idea (that loud sucking sound is a huge number of wife points points swirling in the bowl...). think 529 plan contribution instead :-) Best, rkg (Richard George)

Hey guys, The Barbier-Mueller armor collection is opening October 5 2013 at the Portland Art Museum - they seem to be going out of their way not to advertise this for some reason (or so it seems to me), but I (finally) did find the link: http://www.portlandartmuseum.org/samurai Best, rkg (Richard George)

Tom, Doh! and I even have a modern polearm bag with that stenciled on it! Thanks for the reply! Best, rkg (Richard George)

Hi, I'm trying to identify this mon/symbol that's repeated several times on the back side of this tsuba. it looks like they perhaps either had several variants of it, or just flipped the design side to side or something. I looked in the usual suspects (elements of Japanese design and the pointers and clues book) and couldn't find it. Does anybody recognize this symbol? Thanks, rkg (Richard George)

I've put this up before, but here's one with a piece of the other guy's sword still stuck in it: http://www.rkgphotos.com/recent_stuff/kirikomi.jpg rkg (Richard George)

Scott, you're talking about that big kind of diagonal line on the "left" image, right (you really can't see much else in these images)? The way it glows, it looks like a fiber to me that was on the table when the piece was originally imaged. - If you were interested in buying this piece, I'd consider asking for another image of that area to 1) maybe figure out what it is, and 2) verify the seller actually has the piece or has access to the piece if he's actually just reselling it for somebody else. On how he got the image, copyright infringement issues aside (unless the prior seller says so, buying the piece does not give you usage rights for their images), it could well be the seller gave him a packet with the hardcopy of the image (this kind of looks like a scan of the image) and/or gave the buyer the file when he bought the piece - or the acquisition story is a song and dance - Or he's selling it for somebody else - or something else is going on.... Best, rkg (Richard George)

Henry, Oh yeah - you're talking about the extra big nakago ana so the piece could be wrapped in leather then? rkg

Henry, Good Question - I've always thought that when you see this it usually means its been remounted a number of times - like this: If the sekigane were all knocked out of this piece it would look vaguely similar to your image. Best, rkg (Richard George)

Here's a shobu zukuri one that's being used as a metal tsunagi - when viewed in-hand, the ji-nie are amazing... http://www.rkgphotos.com/recent_stuff/t ... 2_half.jpg Best, rkg (Richard George)

They look kinda like this: http://www.rkgphotos.com/recent_stuff/t ... f_size.jpg Best, rkg (Richard George)

What has always mystified me about these klunkers is what the producers' intended market is - is it the legion of fake Japanese sword makers, people who buy to resell to rubes, or....? There seems to be this huge (and increasing) variety of these available, and... Best, rkg (Richard George)