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DirkO

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Posts posted by DirkO

  1. Owari tsuba, maple leaf? Cast?

    in Tosogu

    Posted

    With all respect to the OP - but this is a cast tsuba. The surface of the tsuba is showing small pitting, the lines and carving are far too evenly soft. But the thing that convinces me the most is the seppa-dai area and how it was worked. The tagane-ato punchmarks are not well-defined and too soft. Please compare this to other papered and known examples, they will not show these features.

     

     

    • Thanks 2

  15. Shakudo nanako “kingfisher” tsuba

    in Tosogu

    Posted

    It's a nice tsuba, but that name (石黒改時) doesn't appear in the Toso Kinko. Now that can happen, seeing it will be a later lesser master, however, there's a comprehensive school genealogy in the book "The Ishiguro school of Japanese sword fittings artists" and there's no Masatoki there either? This makes me think either the 'Ishiguro' part of the mei got added later, or it was a legitimate maker called Masatoki - 改時 who made a piece in the style of Ishiguro and signed it as such. Also the Kanji for Masa 改 is not the one used for the Masa's in Ishiguro, there it's 政. This is strange, seeing that 1 kanji is usually handed down to students to show their lineage.
    eg. for Ishiguro 政常 - Masatsune -> 政美 - Masayoshi -> 是美 - Koreyoshi

    • Like 1
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  16. Goami/Kiami Design

    in Tosogu

    Posted

    The origins of the Kiami School are rather obscure and authorities, when they mention it at all, seem to differ over the details. The consensus, however, appears to be that their origins lie in the Province of Aki in the south of Honshu and Wakayama even records a tsuba signed Hiroshima ju Kiami, Hiroshima being the capital of Aki Province. Haynes (catalogue no.7, lot 67) states that the school, which he chooses to call Goami, originated with a certain swordsmith called Kai Masanaga who worked in the Hiroshima area and one day "added tsuba making to his art as a sword smith'". Joly, however, in the Naunton catalogue states "The first Kiami, Kanenobu, worked in Aki and is said to have been the second Hoan, but it is probable that Kanenobu was the traditional name (torina) of the family as there are great differences in age, style and technique in the pieces signed Kanenobu." This latter point is particularly valid since, as Joly also mentions, there appear to be three quite distinct groups of work which have come down to us today bearing the name Kiami.

     

    The first group is signified by the use of a Tembo-style hot-punched design of mon, calligraphic characters and even flowers. The rather thick iron from which this type of tsuba was made has a slightly coarse grain to it and often nunome work in gold and silver has been used to embellish it. Whilst the nunome work is reminiscent of Shoami decoration, Haynes comments that the kokuin or stamped decoration is usually far superior to that produced by the Tembo. There are some relatively plain, sukashi decorated tsuba that have been given to the Kiami School in the past and Joly illustrates one in Naunton, as no.1127. It is this group that Torigoe refers to in Tsuba Geijutsuko as being "in the Choshu manner".
    The last group, characterised by openwork with nunome zogan decoration, is much more in the tradition of some of the Shoami workers, particularly the Awa Shoami whose elaborate use of nunome reaches a peak in the Kenjo or presentation pieces, reputedly made as gifts to be presented to the Shogun by the provincial Daimyos on their semi-annual arrival in the capital.

     

    The Kiami pieces are even more decorative as their makers would make excellent use of ke-bori and relief technique which would be used to both emphasise and to counter-balance the abundant nunome.

    Extract from "Tosogu - Treasure of the Samurai" 

    • Like 1
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  19. REMARKABLE SIGNED SOMIN TSUBA

    in Tosogu

    Posted

    I've seen the Yahoo! Auction where this pair of tsuba sold. A few things:
    - the seller has a good reputation, regularly also sells papered items
    - seeing YJP is one of the biggest Japanese auction sites for this kind of thing, chances are zero this would pass by unnoticed by big Japanese and international collectors. Sometimes you see bidwars going well into the 10,000's USD.
    - unpapered items will require you to do your homework. Big names even more so. The bigger the name the greater the risk.

     

    The signature should confirm the work. Now the work has been discussed at length here, so let's focus on the signature. In your mei you'll see some oddities I couldn't confirm on any of the papered reference mei I have (or published in Wakayama):
    - at the 2nd kanji on the right you have 2 parallel lines, however in all other mei the top-stroke is right of the one below it and far more stylised. 
    - the kao itself is missing strokes to the left and to the right, again present on all reference mei.

     

    Probably there are more differences that I haven't picked up on yet. The differences in mei cast serious doubt. The fact that a papered Somin kozuka will sell for 7 times the price than this pair of tsuba went for is another red flag. Why wouldn't the seller try for papers, knowing that a papered tsuba would fetch him probably 10x more than what it did now? It doesn't add up. I hope you can still appreciate it for what it is - being a very nice tsuba. 

    image.thumb.png.a354990d7dddbb554c5806ca42a3f19c.png

    • Like 4
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  20. Reasons why swords cannot be imported in Belgium

    in General Nihonto Related Discussion

    Posted

    @Yves I'm sorry, but you're wrong - your links actually confirm what I said. If you read the circular that's mentioned in your link, you'll notice that all edged weapons are excempt unless specified otherwise. And again - edged weapons +100 years old aren't even considered as weapons, but collectables in Belgium. The law (that still needs to be voted by the way) you mention is focussed on firearms. This because criminals have been known to reactivate old deactivated firearms.

    image.thumb.png.bc46357e06fdc6914828ddb962c8e6cb.png

    • Like 1

  22. Kuro Aji or Shiro Aji

    in Tosogu

    Posted

    In one of the excellent descriptions on https://tsuba.info/home/ member @paul tsubadotinfo wrote the following:
     

    Quote

    Altogether the well made iron plate with the shiny dark patina and the carefully executed negative silhouette of the dragonfly result in a mood of archaic elegance. This Tsuba is a very desirable piece for the collectors with black taste (kuro aji) which is the Japanese expression for the ones that understand the old styles well or have a professional approach to Tsuba and kodogu. On the contrary the white taste (shiro aji) means the amateurish look upon things which prefers the easy to be understood, decorative arts.


    Obviously this is tongue in cheek, one isn't better than the other (so put away the torches and pitchforks already!). There are also already several topics about this - however I wonder how things are perceived from a Japanese collector point of view? Do they hold old iron above anything else? I'm not trying to spark the Western discussion, just gain some insights on the Japanese side of things. 
     

    • Like 2
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  23. A study of the Mei of Gassan Sadakatsu

    in Nihonto

    Posted

    4 hours ago, Bryce said:

     

    Gassan Sadakatsu was very consistent in the way he signed, but you can see that the way he signed did change over time. I am confident that all of these mei were by him and not by any of his students.

     


    Hi Bryce - what makes you so confident? I'm not asking this in a mean way - just want to see what features in the mei you use for defining them as Sadakatsu. I have literally 100+ of Sadakazu/Sadakatsu mei on file (not including my library) and I might be able to help out with examples.

    • Like 1

  25. A series of fittings ( or how not to build a collection )

    in Tosogu

    Posted

    I vividly remember seeing this in Utrecht at the Samurai Art Fair in 2018 - absolute masterpiece! Seeing it was in a display case, I never got to see the backside, so very happy with these pics. I mean the collar, how the hands are perfectly rendered in their position, the scissors,... The different materials and how their constrast is used to draw just enough attention to all the areas to create a exquisite dynamic. One can only stop and admire. A real eye catcher! I remember Bob also having a little Ford Hallam exposé - altough - little? -  he actually did bring quite a lot of pieces!

    • Like 2
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