rkg

In keeping with abstract tsuba... Best, rkg (Richard George)

I've only got one shippo piece: its different on the back - for a psychedelic experience: Best, rkg (Richard George)

Dale, In this case I'd posit that it was more like the work was subcontracted out while the tsuba was being made for its first owner rather than it being added appreciably later. Usually pieces attributed to the same groups that did the inlay are made of this kind of doughy iron that rusts at the drop of a hat, which this doesn't appear to be. While "subtraction" from existing pieces (resizing, shape change, removing decoration, hitsu ana added, etc) is actually pretty common, I personally believe that far fewer pieces have had metalwork added at a later date (other than the odd repair and of course the ubiquitous sekigane/hitsu ana plugs, and less often a fukurin to spiff things up ) than is typically thought. The process is actually pretty brutal/takes a surprising amount of work to do "right" (you have to depatinate the tsuba, resurface it to get it to the appropriate condition for the addition, do the work w/o damaging other features, etc). Between the effort/cost associated with that and losing all that wabi-shabby age/wear that was often prized.... On the other hand, other stuff like lacquering/black waxing (at some point) was pretty common, so YMMV. Best, rkg (Richard George)

On the kiyotoshi piece Bruno put up.. First off, it seems like a number of the tanaka guys had quite a variety of ways that they signed, and some of the variations aren't shown in the books, so you sometimes have to look across several mei to see all the kanji. That said, I'd buy that it was done by some Touryuusai school guy, but the work doesn't seem over-the-top enough to be by Kiyotoshi (though I'm sure he didn't do his "usual" level of work all the time/maybe let a student piece slide, etc), so ymmv on that. But back to the mei - To my eye, the kao acutally looks Real Close, but the kiyo and toshi characters seem slightly different (some strokes missing, etc) from the published examples (at least from the examples in the mei book Markus xlated, I didn't pull out Wakayama and compare to those). Blessing it or calling it gimei is above my pay grade though... Good Luck, rkg (Richard George)

Dale, On the first tsuba, I've seen several tsuba with similar inlay papered to heianjou. The hitsu are kind of odd though. Haynes has posited that there were inlay specialists that would put inlay on whatever was brought to them and I've seen a lot of pieces that would be binned as katchushi (like the piece pictured), tosho, etc - except for the inlay - add that and they get moved to the heianjou zougan bin. On the second piece, that type of dragon seems to be more typically depicted with waves/storms, so maybe that is what's going on here? Best, rkg (Richard George)

I think the MFA piece was done by this guy (lifted from the mei book Markus xlated, presented for educational purposes only): I have a piece signed umetada with the ume as the first character, but I kind of think its done by a different umetada guy, maybe the same as the pieces Dale posted?: I hope that helps... Best, rkg (Richard George) Edit: and looking of fleabay, there's a Japanese seller that appears to have another piece by the ichi'ou guy available as well: https://www.ebay.com/itm/265202417456?hash=item3dbf4bbf30:g:wYUAAOSw49Rgtj0m

If you look at the bid history, it appears that the winner was some gaijin (usually the buyers with lotsa transactions are agents), but apparently a Japanese bidder (due to the relatively small number of xactions) was the underbidder... Fun, fun, fun Best, rkg (Richard George) EDIT: here's the abbreviated bid history:

Piers, Oops, my bad - I usually do a cursory check of these er, eterna-threads, but didn't on this one before posting :-/ Yeah, the etched piece is definitely an example where they were added deliberately :-) rkg

here's a couple more: and the back side of the second one, just for grins. Best, rkg (Richard George)

Tom, Thanks for taking a crack at it! Best, rkg (Richard George)

Hi, I've been researching a ko-kinko tsuba I recently acquired and... I'm stuck on what some some of the items are on it - first off, here's the piece: On the front, I know about the obvious ones (kutsuwa with tazuma attached), but what are the two little rings? And on the back, I guess the 4 cresent shaped objects are shiho-de (tie downs), but what are the two L-shaped objects? also, any guess on what the other strap might be would be appreciated. Thanks, rkg (Richard George) As an aside, the construction of this piece is fascinating - it looks like slots were cut for all the decorations which were then stuck in, gold and silver iroe was applied, and then the surface was finished off with black lacquer.

Dale, If only it were that simple. The met's annual budget (before this) was on the order of $300 million (that was in 2017, bet its more now (see below)), and realistically the amount you can reliably pull from an endowment is pretty small and still guarantee that you'll be able to provide the same amount of money in perpetuity. There's a ton of retirement calculators out there you can play with yourself to simulate their problem - and they are supposed to be managing this to last basically forever. If you burn through a big chunk of your endowment, you're gonna have a big hole in your budget for your current programs when things get better for a long time to come. So what do you do... the other interesting thing is that they always have the tin cup out, even when times are good - over a third of their income was from gifts, grants, etc - billionaires like to be on the board and maybe they can be touched for more, but it seems like -somebody- is being pretty generous already... And... if they have a large pile of lesser stuff that they are basically just paying to store/will never be on display because their "good stuff" is better, is it so bad that it gets sold off to somebody who will love/care for the pieces? Probably won't make the people that donated the lesser pieces happy, but... I guess they cold save money be firing everybody and waiting until they can open again (throwing a couple of thousand people on the street -would- save a lot), but... https://www.metmuseum.org/-/media/files/about-the-met/annual-reports/2016-2017/annual-report-2016-17-report-of-the-chief-financial-officer.pdf The darker point of view is that this is a business like any other and their primary goal is to stay in business - kind of hard to do with no money coming in the door. The other dark observation would be the potential for self dealing - Boards deciding "we have to sell some items" and then being the first in line to buy them for their own collections... And again, they've been deaccessioning stuff for a loong time - the change is that the revenues from the sales can be used to meet operations costs - and from a certain point of view money is fungible so maybe that doesn't matter sooo much. rkg (Richard George)

yow wow - that musashi plane piece went for a lot: https://www.sendico.com/ayahoo/item/b541163588 I guess we can hope that this actually was an old piece... You know, what might be handy is to create a list of links to these iai sword tsuba makers... Best, rkg (Richard George)

Dale, Sorry not to reply earlier - too busy... Just for grins I overlapped my image with the one from the jauce auction. Its not the best job, but you can see the pattern is different, just not by a lot. (Dicclaimer: I don't own the copyright to the image from Jauce - it is presented here for educational purposes only). It interesting that the corners were staked kind of in the same way (angled at corners) and that there is what looks like a squared off copper sekigane in the bottom only. I guess they both could be from the same "factory", but I don't think (at least mine) is modan or something, This seems to be a pattern that is often attributed to ko-hagi (which Torigoye claims is actually just another variant of kyo sukashi tsuba rather than being some kind of early choushuu work), though I think this is later than that (so you'd call it what, Edo period kyo sukashi work?) Best, rkg (Richard George)

Peter, that's pretty wild - I wonder what whoever had it made was going for there. Obligatory images of similar "basket style" shingen in my collection: Be Best, rkg (Richard George)

I got one of these pieces as part of a "package deal" (I only wanted one tsuba in the group offered) not all that long ago: Best, rkg (Richard George)

Mike, What a great idea! here's my set of acquisitions (that I have in hand) from 2020... https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=3576043075784348&id=266005023454853 Best, rkg (Richard George)

Here's a little "low crossbar" yamkichibei piece I got not tooo long ago: Best, rkg (Richard George)

Curran, Now you've got me curious/I guess I'll have to start watching for them again. They used to come in waves (collections/stores being liquidated?). The first ones would go for stupid prices, as would the last ones for some reason I never have understood, but you could usually get at least an OK deal on the ones in the middle (the second mouse gets the cheese? 🙂 ) I wonder why the supply of new decent ones has dried up - no interest (or no money in it) so nobody is having them made up anymore as stock unless its a special order, there are now fewer box makers, or...? If you're only looking for a few, the shipping actually isn't so bad even now (gotta love DHL - faster than EMS, the packages aren't as banged up, etc) - the tsuba boxes don't weigh much and I'd usually aggregate them with some other order and going up to the next kilogram in weight isn't so expensive. On the other hand, never mind if you're looking to order dozens of them, since all the options between DHL/fedex and the "slow boat" are gone... rkg (Richard George) EDIT:Just to increase the signal to noise ratio of this posting, have you pinged Grey Doffin to see what he might currently have?: https://www.japaneseswordbooksandtsuba.com/store/tsuba-%26-kodogu/t318-tsuba-boxes

Curran, When I need some more I usually start watching yahoo!Japan for them. Best, rkg (Richard George)

Another male/female pair Best, rkg (Richard George)

"Perfect" ones (almost no (or no) inlay loss, all the major inlays intact, no appreciable corrosion damage, etc), tend to go for a lot (unless the seller really doesn't know what they have/mis-describe/photograph a piece 🙂 ). This is kind of a "Yahoo Japan special" - its a nice piece with reasonable work, the large inlays are mostly there, somebody sprang for expensive papers, whizzy box, etc, but it has er, issues that make it less desirable to the Japanese collector*. A surprising amount of the fine inlays are missing, and there's a hole at the top that seems to be either a piece of missing inlay and/or corrosion damage (note that the seller doesn't show it very well - an oblique image from the top like he shot of the sides would show it so you could see what was going on, so perhaps he thought this was a less attractive feature as well, but I digress). IMHO these detriments put it in kind of a grey zone - while its clearly much better than the usual online offerings, (rusty, missing large amounts of inlay, mediocre work, shined up, etc), when you start getting up into this price range it kind of makes sense to just spend a little more (what, 2K-3K) and get a real prize (no corrosion, little or no missing inlay, damage, etc). On the other hand, its "worth" this because somebody bot it at this price, so YMMV. * I've posted before about discussions with Haynes about Dr. Toyigoye's thoughts on these pieces - in a nutshell, the Japanese like to see them with at most 10% or so of their inlays missing, no missing (or damaged) large inlays, and little or no corrosion damage (for whatever reason these pieces seem to be really susceptible to this). It doesn't mean they're "bad" if they don't have this, but.... Best, rkg (Richard George)

So, are the first couple of volumes now available for purchase as e-books? thanks, rkg (Richard George)

here's a few of my more interesting ones - When digging up some images I found I actually have to reshoot a couple I did with a 5D MKII before I was color managing fully - that "canon red" is horrific to my eyes now... enjoy, rkg (Richard George)

Piers, I actually can't tell if the ridges are worked from the back or not - the iron part is fitted into a gold "cup". I posted a while back about this piece here: Best, rkg (Richard George)