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Old school Kantei exercise with board prize


Valric

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Here is a blade for Kantei. Restored and photographed by Ted and Darcy. 

 

No measurements, descriptions, just stunning photos.

 

I'll check back in a few days. Good luck everyone. 

 

3 guesses per person, rank ordered from most certain to least certain. 

 

Period / Tradition / School / Smith

 

If the board can pull it off, prize for atari is 100$ in ETH to NMB. 

 

Photo link

 

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4 hours ago, Valric said:

Here is a blade for Kantei. Restored and photographed by Ted and Darcy. 

 

No measurements, descriptions, just stunning photos.

 

I'll check back in a few days. Good luck everyone.

 

It looked familiar to me so I looked up recent mails of you and found you telling me what it is .. while I would grant Brian the money I guess it would not be fair ... :popcorn:

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The dark rings are chickei. The patches on the surfaces are tobiyaki, or close to the boshi it is a long kinsuji running off into the unhardened area (inazuma is likely the right designator for this, but this can be argued). 

 

Keep the kantei flowing! 

 

 

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Many good guesses so far :clap:

 

I’m adding the description. 
 

Measurements

Nagasa 71.5 cm, sori 1.3 cm, motohaba 2.9 cm, sakihaba 2.0 cm, kissaki-nagasa 4.9 cm, nakago-nagasa19.9 cm, nakago-sori 0.1 cm

 

Description

Keijo: shinogi-zukuri, mitsu-mune, wide mihaba, no noticeable taper. relatively thick kasane, shallow sori, elongated chū-kissaki

Kitae: overall dense but standing-out itame that is mixed with mokume and some nagare and that features plenty of ji-nie, much chikei, and a faint shirake-style utsuri

Hamon: nie-laden chū-suguha with a wide and bright nioiguchi that tends overall a little bit towards notare, that widens along the monouchi and that is mixed with some gunome, angular elements, many ashi and yō, hotsure, uchinoke, some yubashiri and tobiyaki, and a few kinsuji

Bōshi: widely hardened and largely undulating midare-komi with a pointed kaeri

Horimono: on both sides a bōhi that runs as kaki-tōshi through the tang

Nakago: ō-suriage, kirijiri, kiri-yasurime, three mekugi-ana, mumei

 

Keep up the Kantei flow! 

 

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I'm also a little confused by the choice for Shinshinto
In my opinion nakago shows an older age at the bottom and see a change in corrosion for a gradual shortening over time
From the sugata I would say koshizori which leads me to the late Kamakura
But matsukawa, ko-nie ...
I'm really curious about the result

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I would say my opinion, which has a high chance of coming up wrong:

a) Really o-kissaki. Surprisingly uncommon choice historically, which boxes it to either 1355-1395 or 1570-1620 (very few makers) or shinshinto.

b) Matsukawa-class hada. Pretty obvious which school was being copied.

b) High contrast well forged hada but hamon is very smudged and does not show standing out nie or even well grouped ko nie. It barely shows anything when looking from up down. Also the mokume has very high contrast but not so much ji nie. It does not have the nie substructure one typically sees on early Etchu work. 

So its someone who mixed up the steels in mokume, hardened in nie and the creation literally blew up into his face. Now he tempers in nioi, maybe allowing for ara nie in couple of areas. 

There were some Norishige imitators in Nambokucho period who came close,

Yamamura Masanobu - would have strong nie in hamon. One would see more choji-gunome in Naotsuna's school, more sunagashi in Nobukuni. Sanekage, Tametsugu - strongly nie based hamon. Uda Kunifusa - possible. He also typically makes very Yamato-like hamon without much gunome or togari, like here. So my third choice would be him. He is seldom found with o-kissaki and hamon has strong visible "belts". Either tired/did not photograph well or its not Uda.

There were also good Norishige reenactors in Momoyama-Kanei and even Kambun period (Noritoshi), but I don't remember any of them doing such long kissaki. Some are a bit similar to this style though.

 

Then, in shinshinto mixed up steel and tempering to pure nioi was a trademark of the entire Norishige rediscovery movement, though they often referenced Go rather than Norishige per se. Ikkansai Yoshihiro was likely style's founder, than it went into Naotane's remote lineage through quite a few of his "grandstudents".

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Further clues.

 

I consider a certain number of the Kantei in the thread very close to Atari (80%). 

 

It is Nanbokucho, of Enbun-Joji sugata (1356-1368) according to Tanobe-Sensei. 

 

Here is a link to all high-resolution images: LINK (will be deleted after the exercise). 

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8 hours ago, Brano said:

I'm also a little confused by the choice for Shinshinto
In my opinion nakago shows an older age at the bottom and see a change in corrosion for a gradual shortening over time
From the sugata I would say koshizori which leads me to the late Kamakura
But matsukawa, ko-nie ...
I'm really curious about the result

im guesssing shin shinto sumitoshi because its so insanely healthy 

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