Thank you all, for the tips! Getty's was already on my list for general purposes. Will keep an eye on Nanka Token, but will need some luck there. We're in LA for just a couple of days after which we'll drive to Las Vegas. Escondido will be to far of route I'm afraid.
@Mariusz, review sounds interesting, thank you
@Stephen, I have some Christie's catalogues and looking to buy some more, but most are offered second hand through amazon, but are not offered by amazon themselves, so shipping can not be combined.
I have the Nagayama book among other "beginner" books like Yumoto. Does the Nakahara add something to those? Is there a tsuba equivelent for the Nagayama/Nakahara, I'm also interested in film/photo so a book with nice pictures would be oke too.
I have to order something small trough amazon.co.uk and I was wondering if you guys have any tips on relative cheap nihonto or tsuba books to combine shipping with. Doesn't have to be a wealth of knowledge inside, some eye candy books are welcome too.
Had my first go at drawing oshigata a couple of days ago. I used Art Graf Black Carbon (see pic) for the nakago and a number of different pencils for the rest of the sword. I thought the Art Graf Black Carbon worked reasonably well, but since I have no other expierence, I was wondering if there are better materials to use which are available in the West? I was not able to find black pine wax or someting remotely similar.
Nice but difficult exercise, I came close on two of them using my limited knowledge and very limited resources, which makes me very satisfied. At least glad to see my answers weren't utter nonsense on all accounts . I tried to be the first to answer because in an earlier one of your quizzes I feld very biased based on the answers already given.
Maybe next time you could use a poll type of structure or answers via PM, maybe that way you get some more participants too. It also suprised me a little bit to see that so little of the real veterans on this forum took a shot.
I found it to be very difficult, so does everybody else apparently or they are all sleeping late
But I feel like sticking my neck out today and as a novice I off course have little to lose. So here we go.
I think nr 3 is the oldest and Awataguchi school
next is nr 2 and Rai school
then nr 4 Soshu school
most recent nr 1 late muromachi Yamashiro or Yamato school
If I have one right, I would be very satisfied...