kissakai

Hi BaZZa The Wolverhampton museum is onloy a few miles from the Birmingham museum I know they have quite few tsuba When I get chance I want to 'muscle' in on their collection for qa private view because of all the work I've done at the Birmingham museum I wonder who has seem the F/K & menuki collection at the Birmingham museum as I heard they have some stunners

A few weeks ago a sayagaki that was translated by Markus was posted No idea what it cost but it must have been worth every penny Hes helped me no end Highly recommended

A really nice tsuba shown in the previous post that I hadn't seen before This is my 'poem' tsuba and has been shown before I like this one because it took absolutely ages to get translated and was finally done with a NMB member It is faint in the images Edit because I forgot to add the translation Tôku nari chikaku narumi no hama chidori naku koe ni michihi o zo shiru 遠くなりち可久なるみの者ま千鳥 名具音耳満干をぞ志類 The poem goes back to a samurai warrior poet, military tactician, and Buddhist monk Ôta Dôkan (太田道灌), 1432-1486 Prior to a battle Dôkan was sent at night to check the tides, his response are the words on this tsuba: “The distant and the near cries of the plovers on the beach, that is how you know about ebb and flow.”

Thanks Richard G Would have been exactly what I was looking for but as you said the condition is too poor

Hi Stephen Thanks for the offer but I was looking for the more unusual shape rather than size such as below I also have a 'wan' tsuba and one which has cloud like cut outs on the mimi Grev

I'm not sure but I don't think they were added later Rudder would be a good call but why! Apart from some Namban tsuba I've never seen hitsu ana as a design feature

Hi I am thinking about where my tsuba collection goes next In the short term I buying any strange or irregular shaped tsuba I'd prefer to buy from a NMB member rather than being directed to website links

An excellent set of observations that I enjoyed reading I think this approach could be used (on in my case tsuba) to carefully look at every feature to see if the whole is the sum of the parts (features) How many of us have been guilty of wanting to believe so we look at the features to proof our initial conclusion rather than looking at the features to disproof our conclusion Buyer beware

Some really nice sukashi tsuba I would have liked to bid on

Hi I recently bought this from a NMB member and I wondered if anyone knew what the cutouts on the hitsuana are for? I assume the petal shape is just a generic shape rather than a specific flower

I have had some great feedback but this means I'll need to an updated version There are some schoolboy errors and a couple of attributions that may be in error If an attribution is found to be in error it means some major giggling of the pages I expect this to take around a month to update In the meantime I would suggest no one makes a purchase and ?I will notify the NMB when the second version is complete To any NMB members who have bought a copy I will make a free PDF file available I see I have one feedback completed on LuLu - thanks but any more always helps Apologies for errors but it was a big project Grev

In Bruce Lees book he say's Stage 1) A punch is just a punch Stage 2) A punch is more than a punch Stage 3) A punch is just a punch Now I see where it comes fro

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Again - thanks for all your feedback If I may I have one last favour to ask I looked on LuLu and filtered the results just to show tsuba books I was surprised that none of the tsuba books had any reviews and therefore no 'star' rating Would it be possible for those that have purchased the book to add on the LuLu website say a one line review and a star rating I'm sure this would help with sales as when I'm buying anything on-line I look first for the star rating then read the reviews so this I'm sure would help with sales Grev

I forgot to say that in my examples the hitsuana of this type appears to be later than ko Akasaka but as a collector for only a few years I have a s*&! load to learn I hope this makes sense as I been out for a few beers and a game of pool so not firing on all cylinders

Hi Japan 2121 On this message board we like to use actual first names Two nice tsuba - Shoami can easily be overlooked but they did some nice tsuba Was there any mention of a possible date for the Akasaka? I still think it is a good result to be proved to be an Akasaka tsuba I have about 30 examples of Akasaka in my book and looking at these dating can be difficult It is annoying when the papers only tell you what you can already see so I wonder about the benefits of submitting tsuba for papers I submitted a Yamakichibei that I was 50/50 but it came back as gimei so you have had better news than me

I liked them

Hi As well knew a load of posts have been lost - it happens There were a couple of nice reviews that have gone The last one was a nice reply from BaZZa so if you wouldn't mind would you re-post today reply There was also a current LuLu code that may still work, obviously this would help if anyone has the code

Thanks Malcolm Looks a good match to me I should have this mon in one of my books but must have overlooked it I'll check again

Hi I have a couple of similar mon where I am unsure of the design I checked for both on the internet and in a few of my books I'm pretty sure this is Wood sorrel This image is very similar but I can't find a match the closest being a water lily I'm sure it is a petal/flower rather than a trio of items

Hi A box of no real quality but I like the lacquer work on the mirror

Hi A bit of a head scratcher I would assume a comon theme and obviously all deliberatly designed The upper ribbon shape may be a Buddhist symbol so if correct may be a starting point

Nice tsuba - I missed that one

Now a couple have been sold I would like to post reply and add a couple of details Currently 3 hard copies and 4 PDF books have gone to France, the UK and the USA Please don't take this a plea to buy but I'd like to say that I get £0.96 ($1.24) for the hard copies and a bit more for the PDF version so I'd say it was good value A principal aim was to be able to approach the Museum and say because of the interest shown in the book 'what about arranging an exhibition The last time they were on display was 1930 which to me is a tragedy! Mikolaj You are quite correct with the dating of the early Akasaka tsuba as these should be around C1650 - 1680 oops You also ask about attribution and this in its self is a bit of a story Four years ago I was allowed to photograph all the Museum tsuba and I was also given the attributions. I also have a copy of the catalogue for the 1930 exhibition Nice easy job, an image plus attribution. It became very clear early on that some attributions were way out After talking to some NMB members I found out that possibly 85% of the attributions were incorrect So four years later with help from collectors and members of the NMB the project was completed Rather than mentioning all those that did help and with the main helpers approval I decided to accept full liability for the attributions In the majority of attributions if three people agreed then I accepted their conclusions With almost 600 tsuba there will be errors and for that I can only apologise but evidently it is quite easy to make amendments to the book Ford also made the point that no Edo tsuba were made of sentoku. It's all brass. sentoku only 'happens' in the early Meiji period. (1868 - 1880) The comments above and in other posts can only help with this publication I did ask a few members of the NMB whether to just do a selection of the best tsuba or do the lot Most said, do them all and I think this is one of this books attractions, having the likes of good, gimei and shirimonjo in one book I did have to take into consideration the cost of the book hence both sides of every tsuba is not shown. Namban tsuba are usually pretty similar on both sides There are some schools that are well represented and it is therefore nice to the similarities as well as their differences At the same time within these bigger groups the similarities around the 'anas' and seppa can be good kantai points Namban selection is quite big so although not a favoured school it shows a bit of diversity I'm very happy to receive any good or bad comments and of course I look forward to your reviews With thanks Grev

I’ve asked Brian to delete my older post about this tsuba book as I now have a copy and can make a couple of accurate comments. The book has exceeded my expectations. The colours and text are great on quite heavy paper. The only comment is that the text on the title page has a grey tinge on a white background. The cover has some very common character, the first being in a computer script followed by the written version and finally the sosho version The book has 221 A4 pages in full colour There are 581 tsuba with many mei that to my knowledge have never been published ​There is a cross reference to the tsuba with a mei and vice versa These tsuba come under the general term of the ‘Good, the bad and the Ugly’. So many books are high end tsuba that most can not afford but most of these can be seen a general sales and fairs This publication is available on LuLu publishers https://www.lulu.com/shop/search.ep?keyWords=greville+cooke&type= Rather than post tsuba images I feel it is better to click on the LuLu ‘review’ tab to see the first few pages Paperback = £39.06 ($49.99) eBook = £19.99 ($25.59) The major aim for publishing this tsuba book was to persuade the Museum to get the tsuba out of storage for an exhibition To help this I’d like as many NMB members to promote this book through their web sites, Facebook, Nihonto clubs etc The more books sold gives me a decent lever to ask the Museum to display these tsuba This has taken me around four years to get to this stage with the help of many NMB members but I would like to mention Markus Sesko for his invaluable help with the actual publication. I would appreciate members to add to this post any reviews or corrections