Next best thing to having NBTHK papers?

[Kurikata]

Another design....

[dirk marshall]

4 mino tsubas, 1 green papered

 

[TETSUGENDO]

Dirk,

 

With the exception of one your tsubas are definately a "horse of a different color", very nice and not of the lot pictured here.  Lovely to see examples of  what the others pretend to be.

 

-S-

[dirk marshall]

corresponding fuchi kashira

[TETSUGENDO]

Love the hornet/wasp menuki!

 

-S-

[JohnTo]

The shiirimono issued deepens with more examples being shown above, some with NBTHK papers.

I have found three in the Compton Collection part III catalogue (lots 31, 32 and 33), where they are described as Nagoya-Mono tsuba and made of nigurome plate.  The footnote to lot 32 says ‘This style of tsuba was made to resemble the work of the Mino Goto school.  The demand for Goto style work was so great in the mid-Edo period that the Goto artists could not keep up with demand, so various artists in Nagoya helped supply pieces in the Goto style.’  The three pieces were dated as 1700-1750 and sold for $440 to $880 each; not cheap!

Unfortunately neither the Compton catalogue  nor the Nihon To Koza VI glossaries define what the alloy nigurome is.  The Wikipidia enlightens us with ‘shakudo…entailed the heating of copper, addition of fine gold, and some addition of shirome, a by-product of copper production containing iron, arsenic and other elements. In the Edo period, it appears that the process may have used nigurome rather than copper; nigurome being itself a pre-made mix of copper and shirome. The resulting alloy was then allowed to rest in ingot moulds in heated water, before being shaped, and annealed at around 650 C. In cooled form, the metal was then surface-finished using the niiro process. The modern process tends to omit the shirome, working with copper and gold, and other additives directly if needed.’  For a detailed article of shakudo and nigurome see reference 3 in the Wikipidia article, by Oguchi (Öguchi, H. Gold Bull (1983) 16: 125. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03214636).

Oguchi states that the making of shakudo was a complex process and a closely kept secret within the Goto family.  For example, using the wrong sort of charcoal in the furnace resulted in shakudo that took on a grey, rather than black patination.  So it would seem likely that the Nagoya tsubako used nigurome, an alloy without gold, as they were unable to make good quality shakudo (A project for Ford and his buddy with the XRF analyser?).  In my mind it explains why the seppa dai of most of Nagoya-mono tsuba that I have seen (mainly photos) are bronze coloured rather than blue-black.

While I can accept that these tsuba were probably made for poor samurai who could not afford the genuine Goto products, I’m still left with the problem of the nagako ana.  Many of the photos that I have seen show the characteristic 10 punch marks and the few that I have handled show no signs of filing and scraping as a result of fitting to individual swords.  Maybe they were made for mass produced blades that had identical nagako (unlikely).  Perhaps the tsuba were fitted by packing the nakago ana with a soft material (paper?) and also used a soft material for the seppa that did not scratch the tsuba.

Although I have seen no supporting evidence, I would not be surprised if apprentices from the Goto school were shipped off to Nagoya to produce these tsuba as part of their training. Maybe the Goto family owned the Nagoya ‘factories’. After all, it would be better economics to have a trainee earning money making inferior quality tsuba for someone else, but honing their skills before being allowed in the Goto workshops.  It would also explain why some of these tsuba have NBTHK papers.

From now on I shall be referring to these tsuba as Nagoya-mono, as it sounds a lot better than ‘off-the self’ (shiirimono).  I no longer consider them to be fakes, just tsuba produced by workshops that were inferior to the great Goto artists of the time.  One thing still concerns me.  A newbe tsuba collector like myself has been able to find out a lot of information about these tsuba in a short time.  Established dealers, with far more knowledge than I, often seem to be implying that these are Mino/Goto works.  As someone who has used the Japanese dealers’ websites to improve my knowledge of tsuba, I shall exercise more caution when reading descriptions.  I recall a zen monk who would look in the mirror each day and have a conversation with himself along the lines of  ‘O monk’ ‘Yes sir?’ ’Don’t be fooled’ ’No sir, no sir’.

Best regards, John

(just a guy making observations, asking questions, trying to learn)

[Yves55]

And... another one 🤣

Never seen a tsuba with that much varieties‼️