Sabius

Thanks for sharing Luc, wonderful piece of armor.

Thanks for the hint Brian. Will definitely contact him.

From the photos what I've seen, it doesn't seem that Japanese masters used this technique. This is actually what I've been thinking as well. I've managed to contact someone, who is selling ivory dragon Jizai Okimono and asked the same questions. While I didn't get any pictures of exactly how the pieces were connected, the owner did tell me that some kind of string cord was running through. Now, was the string running in the middle, or were there additional holes in each piece and some kind of loops were made, is still unknown, but I can try several methods of attaching pieces and try which replicates Jizai Okimono best.

Thanks for the response, you are correct, I am looking for a "how it's made" type of a video, or article. Internet is so vast, one can almost find anything, but it's not the case for Jizai Okimono. Yes there are several little videos, giving brief overviews, but they are mostly made for more of a general public consumption and are not particularly technical. Thing is, I have an experience on working with small metal sculptures. Up until this point, my work was mostly somewhat of a steampunk style, here's the octopus that I recently made: I wanted to challenge myself with somewhat of a difficult project in terms of both, esthetics and articulation, which Jizai Okimono sculptures have. And while I am recreating these sculptures I thought I would use traditional techniques4 to articulate them. I have my own ideas on that point, but for the sake of historic accuracy, I was looking for that kind of technical information. Looks like I just have to start and go with my intuition

Thank you very much for your response and the effort that you put in it. I have actually seen all of these videos and probably couple more. What they show is somewhat of an overview of a piece, but what I am interested in is more of a technical aspect of Jizai Okimono, like how these segments go and work together to get an articulated sculpture. What joints, hinges and other things were used in this process. This kind of information about Jizai Okimono isn't documented I guess (at least in English). The Crab video seems to be the most technical, but it is not built the traditional way, as the crab parts are cast in forms where traditional ones were formed from sheet metal forming.

Thank you John for your response, I was actually aware of that book and have already contacted the seller and asked if the book contains that technical information, still waiting for an answer. I've actually contacted several museums, to ask if any of them have held some kind of a documented restoration/disassembly processes. Waiting for their responses as well.

I wonder if anyone can provide any useful information on the actual techniques used to create Jizai Okimono creatures. Like how they were constructed, articulated, etc. Particularly interested in snakes and dragons. Information (at least on English) is very limited and is basically copy-pasted on different blogs and posts. I've seen a picture of the page of some book where snake body X-rays were depicted. It was a low quality photo and couldn't determine what book it was from. To sum up, I am interested in learning the techniques used to build these creatures and will be grateful for any kind of information on this subject.

Little late to the party, but I would like to ask if anybody knows any documented article, or even photos, or research done on dragons and snakes, how they were actually articulated, how these segments are connected together. There is almost no information about their internal mechanisms. Thanks