Teimei

Brian, thanks for your comment! Shinsakuto of course . That´s what i thought too, i hope my post here doesn´t ruin the price for me!

Hello dear members, in search for a kogatana i stumbled across this listing on ebay. (yeah i know ebay is the evil empire :lol: ) http://www.ebay.com/itm/KOGATANA-SMALL- ... 20e5e5eceb My problem is, that my experience with gendai smiths tend to zero. Thats why my question(s) is(are): - do you know this smith? - do you have examples of his work? (i could only find his FB page in Japanese) - general opinion on gendai works? Thanks in advance for any comment and opinion! Regards,

Good thing i downloaded them already! :D

Nice!

Hi, just a suggestion: http://www.nihonto.eu/de/restauration/t ... on/katana/ Regards,

This blade, i presume? http://nihonto.ca/gassan-sadakatsu/

My pleasure!

Hi Chad, could this article be of any use? viewtopic.php?f=1&t=16187&p=142535 Regards,

Jean, i don´t know if i would call him helpless (maybe i don´t know him well enough) and he has never told me what to buy and what not. He just gave me some general information about the importing procedure in general (taxes, customs tariff numbers etc.), which was kind of nice and made things a lot easier for me. I have never bought a sword from him to be honest, but all my transactions went smoothly and that was all i wanted to state here . Regards,

Hi, here is another shop/dealer i can only recommend. Like the name suggests it is a shop in europe, germany to be precise. I purchased several tsuba and some kodogu boxes and every transaction went smoothly. Mr. Mike Prill, who runs the shop, was always willing to explain the quality of his items to me. He even helped me when i was importing my first nihonto, without asking for anykind of payment. I would recommend him especially to members in the EU (no taxes, no problem with the customs office ) and in germany HP: http://www.nihonto.eu/de/nihonto/ FB page: https://www.facebook.com/Nihonto.eu Regards, P.S.: Just in case: i am not affiliated to the shop or Mr. Prill in any way! :D

A swap for my whole collection?

Dear Mr. Hallam, thanks for posting all of those great examples of koshirae. Even to my newbie eyes the mei on the yoshioka pair looked fishy and the workmanship was´nt top notch, but it looked good enough to me . Sometimes its good to learn it the hard way, i even prefer the sledge hammer method to be honest. But i hope you can see that my taste in koshirae has changed (from worse to bad :D). Thanks again for your honest opinion! Regards,

Yeah, i had the same feeling but how comes that they still matching so well. Maybe one piece was made to fit the other?

Thanks for posting your example, seems like this theme was really popular (or just easy to produce? :lol:) and i think your shots are way better than mine. Damn crappy camera on my phone! Regards,

Would you mind posting a picture of your set? Regards,

Does not look too different! Maybe the motif is about traveling the Tokaido or something because these kind of coins were quite popular among people who were travelling over long periods of time. (easy to hide etc.) Okay so it is no Kao but a part of the design of the tsuba, thanks for enlightening me Chris ! http://www.google.de/imgres?sa=X&hl=de& ... CHIQrQMwCQ

moooore pics...

2. A matching set signed Yoshioka Inaba (No) Suke. The yoshioka school is said to be one of the top kinko schools, their quality was comparable to the quality of the goto school. Most of their work was done in shakudo with a lot of inlays of gold and silver. It is from the edo period 18th / 19th century but i tend to say 19th century, composed by a black shakudo ground with a horse motif. The fuchi has inlays of gold, silver and yamagane (the whole horse on the fuchi was inlaid!). The shakuda has a kind of roughed up surface, the carvings are excellently executed and i think the condition is nearly minty. The set came with the original shitodome also mafe of shakudo. The only thing about this set is that the mei looks a bit off to me. The characters are not as good executed as i would have thought. dimensions: Fuchi 38 mm x 21.5 mm x 13 mm Kashira 36,50 mm x 17,50 mm x 10 mm

some more pics...

Hello, this post is about 2 pairs of fuchi kashira i bought, the first pair i bought 3 years ago and the second pair about 2 weeks ago. Of course i post them to collect some opinions but also to show how the taste of a collector changes over the time. I think if you buy tosogu it´s all about your own taste, because in the end these are only just some tiny (and expensive) pieces of copper. 1. The first pair is unsigned and from the edo period, it´s made of yamagane (mountain metal) which is "just" unrefind copper. The size is just about right for a Katana or a O-Wakizashi and that´s nearly all i can say about it, nothing too spectacular :D. dimensions: Fuchi (mm) 39,00 x 23,00 Kashira (mm) 35,50 x 17,00

Mmmh... maybe the name of the shop where they sold the tsuba originally? Something like a trademark?

Hello, i bought a tsuba about 2 years ago that has a kao. From what i know a kao is like a personal seal of a artisan. Has anybody a clue what artisan or school used this particular one, or is it just a part of the decoration? Thanks in advance,

Looks like a part of my fence...

My pleasure! :D The Tsuba is signed: Gyonen 79-sai Tadashige-saku Bunka 5 (1808), 79 years old! I forgot to mention that before.