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A Tale of 2 Owari? (or not?)

lotus

By lotus
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lotus Rising Star

lotus

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Posted

Attached is an Owari from the Sasano book. The second image is a Tsuba using the same exact design but, note the chunkiness of the sukashi walls, youthful iron, and lack of finesse with the trefoils for example. Is this "newer" just a late generation Owari or something more modern? The last pic shows is included to show a little more of the nature of the iron. Thoughts?

 

Dimensions : 83.5mm x 83.8mm, thickness 5.7mm

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Curran Grand Master

Curran

Posted
Posted

I saw it on Yahoo!Japan.

 

The number of decent looking moderns seems to have risen dramatically there. I wondered how long before they start flowing west.

A while back I bought one that I thought might be a late Edo katchushi or the work of Kevin Adams. I knew he'd done one of this design.

        When it arrived-  I went to 20th century or later. Pretty thing for display, but not antique. I suspected, but still the moderns have gotten better and more frequent on Yahoo!Japan.

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rkg Mentor

rkg

Posted
Posted

Yup, got burned on one of those not too long ago, off of yahoo!Japan. 

 

I was super busy when it came in so I just glanced at it (it more or less matched the lowish-res images, and the surface didn't immediately strike me as having an issue)and put it on the shelf to study later - When I looked at it more carefully later, somebody had carefully crafted a surface using several layers of wax/other stuff that more or less looked OK in hand (maybe a little shiny which I attributed to wax), but when you looked at it under the microscope - YAAA!. 

 

The topper was that a pal sent me an image of a basically identical piece that was in Cary Condell's junk section at the SF show years ago - right down to most of the big nakago ana adjustments (they were supersets of each other - there were some large nakago ana adjustments that were common to both pieces, but each had their own too  - like two pieces that were made the same way with some nakago ana adjustments got mounted on different swords)

Anybody need an iai tsuba? :-/

 

Best,

rkg

(Richard George)

 

I saw it on Yahoo!Japan.

 

The number of decent looking moderns seems to have risen dramatically there. I wondered how long before they start flowing west.

A while back I bought one that I thought might be a late Edo katchushi or the work of Kevin Adams. I knew he'd done one of this design.

        When it arrived-  I went to 20th century or later. Pretty thing for display, but not antique. I suspected, but still the moderns have gotten better and more frequent on Yahoo!Japan.

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TETSUGENDO Grand Master

TETSUGENDO

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Hi Christian, I am not sure I understand exactly what you are saying here.

 

Anyway, as a beginning tsuba collector I am very interested in learning how to spot the telltale signs that indicate a fake.

 

Cheers, Pietro

Pietro,

 

Christian is a wonderment to most here, with time you'll start to work things out.   At any rate, I think you've made an excellent point.

 

Cheers,

    -S-

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PietroParis Mentor

PietroParis

Posted
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Interesting. I've dealt with that seller several times, but no tsuba, & have been pleased.

 

Now they promote a bunch of very cheap tsuba which keep popping up in my eBay searches as "sponsored items". I am not planning to buy any of those, but I was curious to understand if they are just low quality or downright fakes.

 

Cheers, Pietro

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rkg Mentor

rkg

Posted
Posted

Christian,

 

Sorry not to post more/reply sooner, but I had a computer die (well, the system disk anyway) and a recent backup had failed and I've been working for the last week to bring up a replacement, on top of everything else I was trying to do, and...

 

I also didn't really want to threadjack lotus's thread, but since you asked...

The owner of the image of the Condell piece never got back to me on letting me share the image publicly (which is too bad because I have a really cool .gif overlaying them which makes what I was talking about obvious), but here's a couple the first shows a before/after shot in identical light, and the second shows the fake surface:

 

post-204-0-16856600-1572362523_thumb.gifpost-204-0-34187300-1572362570_thumb.jpg

 

Most all of the stuff on the surface in the second image (including the texture that looks like lacquer under the weird colored wax) basically washed away leaving a flat-ish, blackish surface.

 

Best,

rkg

(Richard George)

do show me that Iai -Tsuba  Rich :beer:

 

something of this usual garbage tricky ones, commonly in stock, done for fake the mess ???

 

Laugh!

 

.... :) !

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christianmalterre Mentor

christianmalterre

Posted
Posted

Thank you Richard! :)

 

i do see and fully do agree with you!

 

( sorry for my delay dito....winter is comming and i have to take advantage of the last remaining days till it gets frozen ....then i have to stopp forcefully due climate conditions.....more time for me to look for- /- onto Tsuba in winter then... ;-) ...)

 

Christian

 

 

 

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Japan2112 Community Regular

Japan2112

Posted
Posted

A little late to this thread but with iron tsuba, it's all about the iron. When comparing the Sasano Owari to the other consider that the other looks like plate not a wrought item. Then color/finish to me is next importance. If you can't discern these characteristics in a photo then best to avoid.

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rkg Mentor

rkg

Posted
Posted

Hi,

 

The owner of the image I was talking about earlier actually saw this thread and...  The good thing is that he agreed to let me put up the gif I was talking about of the two tsuba.  The bad thing is that he fact checked and pointed out that I had messed up the attribution of where he found the piece.  It was indeed at the SF show, and it wasn't on Cary's table, it was on Cole Cantrell's.  AND... while a lot of Cole's pieces are firmly in the er, value kodogu category, its not "junk", so that isn't correct either :sad:

 

If the sysadmin would either let me put an "EDIT" comment on my earlier posting or just copy the above into them I'd REALLY appreciate it.  I usually at least try to fact check stuff before posting and messed up :sad:

 

Anyway, here's the gif of the tsuba at the show and mine. you can see they are real similar.... I assume they must have been investment cast for iai or something:

 

post-204-0-98721400-1573689139_thumb.gif

 

Sorry about the screwup,

rkg

(Richard George)

 

 

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rkg Mentor

rkg

Posted
Posted

Kathleen,

 

The short answer is "no, not really", but its more complex than that .  the Fleabay/Preypal combination is probably better from a safety/ease of return standpoint, but even that requires that you know what you are looking at so when it arrives you can ascertain if there are problems that were not described (or deliberately hidden), if the piece has been doctored (and whether you care - some people don't - but the next buyer might), and the quality of the piece in general, so you can try and your money back if you feel you've been rooked...

 

And on yahoo!Japan returns are difficult - few agents are experts on fittings, so you're generally not going to know you're screwed until you open the box from Japan, sometimes weeks after the auction close.

 

And the yahoo!Japan marketplace is changing - used to be there were a few dealer types (some reputable, some not so much) and a lot of individuals who I guess were cleaners/junk shops/people using  yahoo an alternate venue to the Dealer Industrial Complex who didn't want to pay them much for something (there's a reason most of those guys are millionaires...) - and there was actually a surprising number of not-bad-pieces mixed in with the bad/mediocre stuff.  Now, its becoming dross dumping ground just like fleabay so you have to be extra careful/picky....Though to be fair, there's still some pretty good pieces that show up once in a while (and actually a surprising number of items end up being offered on both venues simultaneously, sometimes by the possessor of the piece, sometimes by a reseller).

 

But.... The thing is that both venues are like catnip to treasure hunters/gamblers - Both have slick systems for you to forage for prey, find overlooked things, battle with other bidders, and participate the whole auction rush thing in general - so safety kind of takes a back seat to our baser desires....

 

Best,

rkg

(Richard George)

 

Is it safe to buy tsuba on ebay or yahoo Japan at all? Jeez...

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Ganko Proficient

Ganko

Posted
Posted

It is pretty much a crap shoot in those venues, but your knowledge may improve your odds. Best to suspect there is something wrong until proven otherwise. Having return privileges can reduce the risk. Items coming out of Japan are especially suspect, if it is really a good item they wouldn't have to put it to auction.

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rkg Mentor

rkg

Posted
Posted

In case anybody's interested, I think maybe my er, iai tsuba presented above came from this guy (or somebody else doing this as a cursory glance through the many tsuba this seller offers didn't reveal my pattern):

 

http://tsubaryuken.com/index.html

 

Some of these look a little off, but you could strip a great many of them, remove the tacky modern sekigane, corrode them to create what people call "bold hammer work" (which is actually usually corrosion), and....  Its ready for Fleabay (or yahoo!Japan)....

 

Be careful out there,

 

rkg

(Richard George)

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lotus Rising Star

lotus

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Richard 

 

Wow, now we have to worry about those! While those tsuba do look like they have homogeneous iron, a true antique tsuba can also look like that depending on how it is photographed. Maybe it is safe to only buy a tsuba online when the pics are good enough to show the true nature of the iron and it's patina??

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