another kantei...

[Darcy]

Hint: o-suriage mumei sword.

 

[remzy]

The hada looks Hizen.

[Ted Tenold]

Absolutely brilliant work. Love it. I'll bid:

Rai Kunitoshi

[hybridfiat]

For some reason all I get instead of pictures are little boxes with an X in them????????

[John A Stuart]

Steve, Did you try: left click on red 'x' and right click on 'show picture' ? John

[Jean]

I would have liked to have an overall view of the blade.

[Darcy]

Hi Jean, I don't have any overall view :-).

 

Very few takers, I was surprised because Reinhard already wrote that he thought it was a Dewa no Daijo Kunimichi masterpiece.... hmmm. :-)

[Darcy]

ps. it is kind of an april fool's joke, and a lot of people thought i was the fool except I wasn't .

[Brian]

Ok...you got me intrigued

....The katana in the former collection of Field-Marshall Sir Francis Festing; also with an attribution to Masamune, turned out to be wrong. Nevertheless this sword is probably by Dewa-Daijo KUNIMICHI and is one of his masterpieces.

From: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=2814&p=20061

Please tell us more....

 

Brian

[Darcy]

Gah I wrote up a huge reply to this but don't know what happened to it.

 

Anyway the short version is that I went to Christie's and bid in an auction, I was jetlagged and awake for two days. I viewed the swords for a couple of minutes and went in to sleep then missed the second viewing so was kind of flying blind.

 

I thought the dai was a Shizu (doesn't look anything like a Shizu) and the sho of the pair was a Shodai Nobukuni. Felt both would go Juyo, they had nice koshirae too.

 

All the Euros knew the dai was a Shinto blade so there was not much bidding.

 

I also bought two other swords, one of which I was bidding on the wrong lot. Never do this stuff jetlagged/awake for two days :-).

 

There is a very long story in the middle... but Bob Benson discovered the koshirae tsuka maki was a work of Tsuka Hei, which is pretty big news.

 

http://www.bushidojapaneseswords.com/Di ... %20hei.pdf

 

He wrote that article on it.

 

I am not sure if people thought I was a dummy for buying the pair of swords, but as Reinhard mentions the katana as being a masterpiece of Kunimichi in the Horikawa Kunihiro mon, it was very good, but the tanto was what I was really interested in. What screwed me up is the katana not being koto, so it being mumei after kinzogan removal would have killed the value.

 

What everyone missed though is that the tanto was even better than Nobukuni, I think the shadow of the Masamune-as-Shinto cast itself over the tanto and the two came as a pair (tanto with gimei Yukimitsu on it).

 

I was told in the end after sending the pieces to Japan that the tanto would pass Juyo and the mei should be removed because it was

probably Soshu Sadamune

. If not that, then definitely Shodai Nobukuni as I had kantei'ed.

 

I ended up selling the two to a client who wanted them. I described them as a Shinto katana with false kinzogan and a Nambokucho Period Soshu tanto with gimei Yukimitsu to my client list as I did not want anything not on paper to affect perceptions of value. I stated what they cost me, and a client made a nice offer so I sold them. After they were bought I gave the owner the good news as a bonus.

 

So basically the fake Masamune was hiding a

Sadamune

. There may be no more Masamune to be found but one can hardly complain about discovering what I discovered .

 

I would be very interested if Reinhard were to give the background information that comes to the conclusion of the daito as Kunimichi. I would tend to agree with that opinion, and the others I got were that it was Satsuma.

 

[Guest reinhard]

Hi Darcy,

 

This "famous couple" is travelling the west for quite some time. You can find them published in the collection of the V&A museum ("The Arts of the Japanese Swords", by B.W.Robinson, 1961). I would like to show you the plate 14 of the catalogue. At that time both blades were considered to be genuine, like most of the "big-name" blades in the V&A museum. Most of them turned out to be false and went to auction later. A friend and teacher of mine, who passed away several years ago, told me, there had been a suspect among scholars and collectors, that the "Masamune" Daito was most probably a work by Dewa-Daijo KUNIMICHI, when it appeared at auction many years ago. For reasons unknown to me, this Katana and Tanto have been treated as a couple since the times of Field-Marshall Sir Francis Festing. The Masamune-attribution is probably one of the many cases, in which (honorable) appraisers had to find "the closest thing to a Masamune" and usually picked up very good swords in Soshu-style.

 

reinhard

[Darcy]

When I decoded all the paperwork and the dates of it, it was clear that the two pieces were purchased at different times in Japan, and the koshirae while from 10 feet away seemed to match they were of different make up close.

 

Both were bought at Japan Sword shortly after WWII, as the papers were written by Mr. Inami, SHO-SHIN Masamune and SHO-SHIN Yukimitsu :-).

 

The papers for the daito had a transfer of ownership from Viscount Inaba to Japan Sword when it was sold, so that part of the history looked OK. The tanto was actually noted as belonging to the Kishu Tokugawa. So yes, really no clue why the got paired up other than trying as collectors will to put together a daisho.

[Jacques]

Hi,

 

Below a link to the comment written by Clive Sinclaire about the V&A Masamune.

 

http://www.to-ken.com/ (Click on sword register, sword number 56)

[Darcy]

Yes, I had loaned the swords to Clive for a bit and he wrote that.

 

He makes gorgeous oshigata. I wish I had 1/10th the skill.

[Guest reinhard]

There seems to be a confusion here. The sword shown by Darcy is the one from the former Festing-collection (kin-zogan mei "Masamune" on the sashi-omote) and was given into auction long time ago. The sword mentionned by Jacques and discussed on the page linked by him, is still in the V&A museum and has its "Masamune"-attribution on the sashi-ura. I.e. is another sword.

 

reinhard

[Darcy]

Ah yes, I had just glanced at what was there and had assumed it was the same one without looking at it deeply. Big oops.