Gold Rabbit Menuki

[Gasam]

Heyas,

 

Was able to get these Menuki. Described as circa 16k gold, possibly late 1800s by antiques dealer, but they are guessing on both (is my guess at least).

 

I quite like them, they seem both detailed and simplistic somehow, to my eyes at least.

 

Will be interesting to see backside when they arrive. Perhaps there will be a mei, although I understand it is not so common on menuki.

 

If anyone recognize this as a style of a certain school or artisan, please don´t hesitate to comment (or indeed comment on any aspect of these it you want ). Still very much a learner in the field of tosogu :-)

 

 

Cheers,

 

 

 

 

[Barrie B]

Yes, very nice.. Any chance we can see the back..? Thanks.

 

Barrie.

[Stephen]

Will be interesting to see backside when they arrive.

 

were looking forward to it.

[Gasam]

Thanks guys,

 

Will post upon arrival, might be a few days :-)

[Gasam]

Heyas,

 

Not the best of Pictures (i blame mobile phone), but basically they are both like this on the backside.

No signature as expected.

 

Cheers,

[nagamaki - Franco]

Hello,

 

My guess at this point would be that they would paper to one of the Waki Goto line artisans.

[Gasam]

Hi again,

 

Thanks for input, I really appreciate it :-)

 

I think I will have these submitted for shinsa. They are quite small (just over 2 cm, little under an inch) long.

 

So the detail in the first picture are really, really tiny. How someone had the eyesight to make this is just Incredible....

[Ford Hallam]

So the detail in the first picture are really, really tiny. How someone had the eyesight to make this is just Incredible....

 

[Gasam]

Haha good point!

 

While we are on that subject of detailed engravings, a friend of mine collects ancient coins. Turns out nobody really knows how the ancient romans, greeks etc were able to engrave the striking dies with such small detail. Theories range from looking at work through water drops to simply hiring extremely nearsighted people. Nobody knows :-)

 

But digression :-) kind of.

 

Edit: the water drops they think might be accumulated on leaves etc. Kinda hard to look through a falling drop :-)

 

Cheers,

[Stephen]

add waterdrop cut add waterdrop cut repete 1000+ times

[Ford Hallam]

The ancient Greek, Romans and Egyptians all had a reasonably good grasp of optics and were very capable of grinding lenses.

 

There even exists a lens shaped from emerald that was thought to had belonged to the Emperor Nero. It is shaped to fit the eye socket and further shaped to correct an astigmatism.

 

Perfectly polished rock crystal spheres are to be found in the Shosoin Repository that date back to the 7th century and we know Portuguese traders imported magnifying lenses into Japan from around the second half of the 16th century.

 

The point being, if you can't see it you can't carve it

 

While some 'authorities' sniff at this book I found it very interesting and much of it quite credible. The author tends to wander off into some dodgy theories in his other books apparently, I haven't read any of them.

[Gasam]

"Encyclopedia Hallamica"

 

How many volumes would that be I wonder  :-)

 

Thanks for sharing, it will be interesting coffe times at my coin collecting friend when I tell him of this :-)

 

Cheers,

[Brian]

Ford,

Pardon me for pointing this out...but you have posted a number of possibilities and theoretical magnification methods that existed and could have been used. But at no point is there a confident "this is what they are known to have used regularly...." posted anywhere.

Just wondering if this is something that is still relatively undocumented, or if there was no widespread use of a certain method?

Is it known that they used the Portuguese lenses, or is that only something assumed to have had limited use? I am just curious as to whether it is documented what the standard was during the 16th and later centuries. Or did they work without magnification often?

[John A Stuart]

See here Brian, for specs. I think there were other magnifications previously, but, specs would have been the most convenient. http://antiquespectacles.com/topics/Japanese/japanese_influence.htm

[Curran]

Ford,

Pardon me for pointing this out...but you have posted a number of possibilities and theoretical magnification methods that existed and could have been used. But at no point is there a confident "this is what they are known to have used regularly...." posted anywhere.

Just wondering if this is something that is still relatively undocumented, or if there was no widespread use of a certain method?

Is it known that they used the Portuguese lenses, or is that only something assumed to have had limited use? I am just curious as to whether it is documented what the standard was during the 16th and later centuries. Or did they work without magnification often?

 

Brian-

   Ford is going to know infinitely more on the use of magnification in the crafting of kodogu than I ever will. So let him be the captain of the field on this topic.

I would say that if you look at the genuine works of Shozui (aka. Masayuki) that his varying tier rendering of certain objects or animals often feels like he was zooming in and out on an object or model using a microscope. It didn't surprise me to later read that in his workshop he supposedly had a shelve or two full of different glasses (spectacles) for different magnifications.

 

Don't ask me to back that up with an original source. It may or may not be true, though I think I first heard it from Haynes. I owned a f/k of a deer design by Shozui that was very 3 tier in design, as if it were meant to be viewed with 3-D glasses on. It made me believe he might have worked with an array of magnification.  [sold the set back to Japan, and was mildly amused to see it for sale at the DTI.]

[nagamaki - Franco]

In regards to optics, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rangaku .

[John A Stuart]

By the time of Shozui we have 300 years at least of spectacle production in Japan. I am sure grinding lenses was just as advanced by then as anywhere else in the world. For sure 13th century is a benchmark period for modern type glass specs and a few hundred years before that polished rock crystal lenses for specs known. The first recorded lens is the Nimrud lens of 700 BC. It wasn't so backward as we'd like to think. John

[Ford Hallam]

Brian, we know essentially very little about how early metalworkers actually worked.  The few Edo period documents that discuss metalwork are silent on the issue of magnification.

 

All we can really do is look at the objects themselves and try to imagine how, given available technologies, they might have been made. Fine work in metal is particularly tricky because when carving the chisels inevitably leave the cut metal mirror like which further complicates seeing things clearly. I would suggest, also, that particularly when lenses first started to be used, that their use wasn't advertised. Having a serious advantage over one's competitors would not be something you'd want them to know about. You'd just want to leave them wondering in amazement at how you managed to 'suddenly' start make so much finer work than the rest of the optically challenged chisellers.

 

But as has been pointed out on this thread lenses were known and used in the Edo period, this is clear, the question now becomes, when did they start using them? For me it's a matter of looking at the work and trying to judge whether or not it could be done without magnification.

 

As I wrote earlier, lenses are known to have been brought in to Japan from the mid 16th cent. 1550's onwards. Local craft skills would have quickly allowed for the manufacture of lenses in Japan thereafter.

The links Franco posted provide some solid evidence of that I think.