joke of the day

[Bungo]

thses horsies are horny...................

 

http://cgi.ebay.com/Japanese-NANAKOJI-H ... dZViewItem

 

milt the ronin

[Brian]

What? You never seen horses with horns before? :lol:

They make them big and mean in old Japan apparently :D

 

Brian

[Ford Hallam]

hi Guys,

 

Frankly I'm quite shocked at these images. Thinking about it though it was inevitable and means that this game is really no longer for the uninitiated.

 

This seems to me, to represent a new level of faking from our mainland, Oriental friends. I won't go into major detail at this point but would like to draw attention to this (to me anyway) new area, and level, of fakery. There are in fact ( at this stage) quite a few tell tale "give aways" but it does suggest that these fellows are working hard to stay ahead of our game.

 

As always, let the buyer beware! and never trust the apparent source of any items offered for sale on the net. It's not that difficult to hide your real location.

 

so; be careful out there.

 

regards, Ford

[Stever]

Ok, that's really disturbing then, as that seller is Japanese and ships from Japan, and usually seems to have reasonable stuff, though there are a lot of Edo tourist items. Unless they've had their account hacked, I am obviously missing something here. Ford, I realize you don't want to give it away, but would you mind PMimg me with a hint at least?

 

thanks,

/steve

[Rich T]

Guy's I will wager these are meant to be cattle, not horses. It is a common theme in Goto and other Kinko works. It's condition is poor but I think old (ish) Japanese and maybe around late Edo or early Meiji periods. I would probably classify this as Shiiremono.

 

I would be interested in knowing Ford's tell tale sign's ?, maybe I am not seeing something, though in my eye, I doubt it is a modern fake from China.

 

Cheers

 

Rich

[Bungo]

the horsies get so horny that one couldn't take it anymore and went AWOL............

p.s. average quality ( god, I ought to be a teacher, easy grader !! ) perhaps but not a falsie to me ( but then I made an appointment to have my eyes checked next week) :lol:

 

milt the ronin

[Ford Hallam]

The tell tale signs are not in any way secrets that I wanted to keep to myself, rather, I didn't have time to go on at length last night.

 

The most obvious technical point is the incredibly inept use of the chisel. This was simply not carved by any Japanese craftsman, in addition to which it's fairly obvious that whoever carved this didnt really understand the image they were carving, probably copied from a book. It's one thing to say a piece is of low quality but an entirely different thing when it has no real connection to the way the genuine article was made. The nanako is also very amateurish, the punch didnt indent the ground enough to produce a full bead. It looks a little like the sort of nanako you sometimes see in very early work. Whoever did this is clearly just getting to grips with the technique.

 

The whole piece is made of copper, made to look like shakudo, gold and copper. If you consider the wear pattern it seems inconsistent that the horse/cow (?) which has evidently lost its gilding and is now showing copper also has a fake shakudo black. If that horse was supposed to appear as shakudo, why has it got traces of gold in the crevices? The horse/cow that appears to have no black on it has only copper and traces of gold showing.

 

There are 4 creatures on this kozuka, 4 reads as "shi" in Japanese; this sounds like the word for "death" in Japanese. It's very unlikely a late Edo artisan would commit that faux pas.

 

Admittedly shiirimono do appear to be rather sloppily put together but at least they were put together by people who understood the basics of the craft and the construction of the objects they were making. This kozuka really doesnt demonstrate that to me at all.

 

One final thing to factor in to your consideration is this, given the guild type system that dominated the crafts in Japan in the past, it is highly unlikely some completely unskilled chap decided one day to start knocking out things of this "quality" without any apparent background or training in the craft. At the time of the haitorei it is estimated that there were some 16 000 metalwork artisans working in the sword fitting world, no place for someone so incompetent.

 

but, this is obviously just my opinion. Each to their own.

 

Cheers, Ford

[Brian]

Ford,

 

I also don't see any indication that this is any more than a low quality genuine kozuka depicting cattle?

I would be very surprised if it was an outright fake, and I doubt there is any real money to be made by the Chinese faking kozuka when the design isn't very well done in the first place. They do low quality ones as part of the koshirae of fake swords, but kozuka on their own would probably never become a main focus.

 

Regards,

Brian

[Nobody]

There are 4 creatures on this kozuka, 4 reads as "shi" in Japanese; this sounds like the word for "death" in Japanese. It's very unlikely a late Edo artisan would commit that faux pas.

I realized one point.

There had been the 5th cattle on the left most part of the kozuka and it is lost now. So there were at least 5 cattles on it.

 

Anyway, the figure of cattle/horse is rather strange. I think their bodies and tails are of horses. But their heads are obviously of cattles.

[Ford Hallam]

Hello Koichi,

 

I had also wondered about that gap that you mention. If there was a 5th cow then it would be placed in a very odd position, as it is, the arrangement is not very good but the missing one would make it very unbalanced. It is also difficult to see how this missing cow was actually attached. It doesn't appear as though it was inlaid, no cavity. That leaves us with the possibility that the cows are sue-mon, attached to the plate by means of a pin that passes through the plate, but I can see no hole. Was it simply glued on? this is the most probable answer. There is in fact a bit of pitch type glue residue in the area where the missing piece was. So it would seem that at least the maker had intended to have 5 elements. My comment about 4/shi is no longer relevant but I am still not convinced of its authenticity.

 

I noticed that the vendors have a disclaimer on their ad. They won't vouch for its authenticity either.

 

Anyway, I think I've said enough.

 

I know I wouldn't pay one yen for something like this and I very much doubt that any of the regular posters on this forum would either. Some poor sucker will though. I'd also suggest that we may begin to see better fakes of this sort in the future too, they'll probably be described as "mid-Edo"

 

:D

[Martin]

The implementation of the subject is also quite strange to me.

Neither do I see cows nor horses...

The cows have hooves and tails like horses and the horses have horns like cows :?

Never actually seen that before...

 

cheers,

[Rich T]

I know I wouldn't pay one yen for something like this and I very much doubt that any of the regular posters on this forum would either. Some poor sucker will though. I'd also suggest that we may begin to see better fakes of this sort in the future too, they'll probably be described as "mid-Edo" :D

 

I certainly agree with Ford on this point. It is rubbish. And no matter what we think it is, what the theme is and how old it may be, we all agree that is something to keep OUT of the collections.

 

I also agree that fakes will improve as time goes by, it is inevitable, and already we see words like Edo, Muromachi and whatever in the Chinese knock off swords. I guess this is one of the great things about free discussion, and forums. We can share whatever knowledge we have and help others who may or may not know what is good and what is not.

 

Best and happy hunting

 

Rich

[Bungo]

the 5th horny horse went AWOL.............

 

these animals are progeny of horse and cows gotten mixed up from previous encounters ..............

 

don't think that happened ? Here's the proof !!

http://www.esnips.com/web/kozuka?docsPage=4#files

more pics on page 5

 

milty the ronin

[Bungo]

" This seems to me, to represent a new level of faking from our mainland, Oriental friends. I won't go into major detail at this point but would like to draw attention to this (to me anyway) new area, and level, of fakery. There are in fact ( at this stage) quite a few tell tale "give aways" but it does suggest that these fellows are working hard to stay ahead of our game. "..............

 

the more I looked at the close up pics, the more I think Ford could be right about this being a re-pro.

 

Hard to put that " gut feeling " into words, but the workmanship of the bull/horse hybrids ....................

 

milt the ronin