jdawg221

Looking for Fujiwara yukinaga signed swords. Pm me if you have any

eggplant themed iron tsuba with gold zogan accents. Pretty nice example of an eggplant themed tsuba, rather uncommon theme to see in the west. Around 70mm in diameter, 6-7mm thick rim. Looking to get 150 shipped zogan openwork tsuba. Rather handsome tsuba with mostly intact zogan and what I believe is a spindle theme. Around 71mm in diameter. 125 shipped gunsen themed iron tsuba. Pretty common theme to see, nonetheless this one is well executed. Has what I believe are brass zogan, mostly intact. Around 75mm in diameter, looking to get 125 shipped. Prices are negotiable, pm with any questions.

Actually after talking with Ray Singer it turns out the paper for this specifically attributes the wakizashi buzen ryokai around the tenbun period. No idea how they specifically picked that era since it's mumei, but buzen ryokai seems like a rather rare attribution. Also this is what happens when I don't bother reading the papers on the swords I buy haha

bump

That's true, but it seems to default to that appearance for me and others I have talked to. Basically I was stating that stealing the look is not the most grievous offense that makes this site an obvious copy. Also since we are talking about nihontowatch, I wish that hoshi would stop using ai to write his descriptions of different smiths and schools. While it takes a lot of work to go through each of them, it really only makes the site useful as a price aggregator if you do not know what sites to keep an eye on yourself. Pic related is rather obvious with the random adjectives thrown in, but if you are into shinto or shinshinto smiths like myself, these types of run-on descriptions with weird vocabulary are present everywhere.

To be fair, nihontowatch also heavily borrows its look from yuhindo.

Yup. While theyre obvious visually they seem to have been done pretty long ago. Also there are two, both on the same side of the sword around the monouchi. I am guessing that the more circular one is filling in a fukure and the other is most likely for a noticeable ware

Price lowered to 2800 shipped

Damn this is nice. Anyone know who owns this piece now?

Yes this one

Samurai shokai has an interesting higo blade in good polish for less than the sword listed. Unfortunately it's a bit short and doesn't come in koshirae

I agree with sentiments others have shared, however looking at it from a practicality standpoint: the koshirae is obviously mismatched and will not match the blade. Would require extensive modifications to remove any movement that is certainly present in the tsuka and tsuba. The sword, while attractive, is a mumei taira takada with a starting bid over 3000 dollars. If it were signed, that would be one thing, but it's mumei from a time where the school it is attributed to arguably did worse work than sue bizen kazuuchimono. I would ask what exactly you are looking for in the sword. If you want matching koshirae, sellers like masayuki from e-sword, certain pieces from samurai shokai, or even meirin sangyo would have options around that price point that would be better. If you just want a nice bare blade, samurai nippon or touken komachi are better options at that price point. Samurai nippon in particular currently has a rather nice looking muromachi naminohira blade in what appears to be matching higo koshirae. If you're looking to collect more practically minded blades and have some sort of attraction to bungo sword, I'd almost completely ignore taira takada work that isn't nagamori and look at Shinto takada, as there are plenty of smiths there that offer excellent quality for the prices you find their pieces at.

Also another thing with this ranking is that its purely from an artistic perspective. What the people that used the swords considered the best is very different from what modern collectors would consider the best. A good example of this is how sue bizen swords were seen during the edo period. Frequently they were considered the swords to use when you wanted to "get the job done", and famously after the igagoe revenge, during which araki mataemon's rai kinmichi broke during the fight, Tonami told him that he should have used a sue bizen sword instead. Hizen swords were also highly praised, and while mainline hizen still rightfully gets lots of respect and praise in the community, you have stories from ww2 in china where cheap swords from hizen were preferable over swords from higher rated smiths like inoue shinkai.

Exactly what I was thinking when looking at this list. For one the nbthk rankings are based off a few things, some of which are just plainly subjective. Such as who owned it, hype surrounding the smith, or, and this one might be controversial; whether it is shortened or not. Suriage has little affect on the artistic or functional qualities of the blade(unless it is done very poorly of course), yet it is a big mark against how a blade does with papers once you get past a certain point in history. Specifically with the hype surrounding the smiths: I have handled a juyo kotetsu exactly once, so take this with a grain of salt, but I was not that impressed. I find other shinto smiths to be of equal if not greater quality, specifically Tadayoshi 3, shodai tadayoshi, hell even yamashiro kunikiyo. But because kotetsu blades are rare and there is a level of hype surrounding the smith, the nbthk shows favoritism towards ranking them. In fact you can find th mutsu no kami blades that are just as cleanly forged if not more cleanly forged than juyo kotetsu examples, yet theyre th because that is what is expected of the smith, and the smith's work is not quite as rare as kotetsu's is.

I am also curious what your issue with him was. I have 2 swords Im waiting on from him(one has already shipped), and I have had a pretty decent experience with him when compared to other sellers. Yes he is quite blunt, but he was willing to ship via ups rather than ems, and he also reached out to me to inform that the export papers had been approved rather than me having to message him.