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Another two for ID


TomMcRei

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The Brass mon on the Masdanaga look very unusual to my eyes. They appear to be applied on top of the surface, rather than inlaid, but there's no evidence of nunome-zogan cross-hatching. Also, the cut out details on the leaves of the mon are very delicate, but one or two details/irregularities seem to be repeated on both remaining mon. This leads me to suspect that they are modern laser cut stencils. Their actual placement of the iron plate looks awkward to my "Edo eyes' too

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I would like to learn.
I'm sure I'm wrong, but to me the insert does not look nunome, but very flat hirazogan. At the edges to the mon, the material of the tsuba seems slightly raised. In Tony's enlarged pictures (thanks for that), you can see a fine groove even on the left Mon at the missing part at 12 o'clock.

And why shouldn't stencils have been used earlier for efficient work? Such tsuba were certainly not unique, but were produced in small series.

For me, the tsuba seems quite normal as a work from the Bakumatsu or early Meiji.

 

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Dear Thomas.  

 

Quote

but to me the insert does not look nunome, but very flat hirazogan

 

Hirazogan would suggest a depression cut into the plate and the design inserted into it, no signs of that here, especially if you look at the areas where mon have been lost or removed.  I believe the signs you are seeing are the edge of whatever adhesive was used to affix the mon.  As Ford points out there are no signs of the ground preparation for nunome zogan either.  The plate itself is probably a perfectly normal tsuba made more saleable by the application of a few mon.  If these are brass then cutting them with a CNC machine is not a problem, cutting them by hand would be tricky to say the least.

 

This is something to look out for but it is a simple case of adding detail and hopefully value to a run of the mill tsuba.

 

All the best.

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