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Edo? sanmai tsuba... and fittings


Bob in Ohio

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So, I traded into this... the blade is in poor shape, but I rather liked this poor orphan.  I am pretty new at this, and hoping someone can unpack what exactly you see in the copper tsuba and fittings & approximate age.  Hopefully, this all has been together for a long time... with a two-piece habaki..... and unsigned blade  TIA/ Bob

 

 

Tsuba.1.jpg

tsuba.2.jpg

Sanmai.02.jpg

Sanmai.01.jpg

Sanmai.03.jpg

Sanmai.04.jpg

Habaki.01.jpg

Habaki.02.jpg

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Bob, Is it possible to see some better images, side view of the nakago-ana/hitsu I can't make out any layering if it is Sanmai?

If Sanmai the condition is pretty good, usually the top and bottom layers are very thin and show crushing or wear through, the design on yours is identical both sides, so that would suggest the hitsu was cut out after construction else the hitsu would cut through the dragon designs both sides.  Pretty close to the dragon design  in the link supplied by Geraint  [but not identical].

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It is a sanmai. 

Bob is correct.

 

I owned a near identical one many years ago.

Attached is another of this sort of 3 piece construction. Top and bottom plate are pressed or hammered out and then finished, often including addition of gold.

Often held together by a little shakudo fukurin, and sometimes two discrete pins through the seppa dai area.

 

ZZ Waves 030.jpg

ZZ Waves 032.jpg

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Curran, actually it was Geraint who pointed out that it was Sanmai [Bob is asking the question] 

Do we know how the separate plates stay put within the fukurin without pins or rivets, was a solder ever used? I realize that once mounted it would be fixed in place by the nakago, so was it really an issue unless it was unmounted? 

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6 hours ago, Spartancrest said:

Curran, actually it was Geraint who pointed out that it was Sanmai [Bob is asking the question] 

Do we know how the separate plates stay put within the fukurin without pins or rivets, was a solder ever used? I realize that once mounted it would be fixed in place by the nakago, so was it really an issue unless it was unmounted? 

 

Ah. Good link by Geraint.

In response to the question:  I don't know. The few I handled never had any sense of looseness or give to them. If with pitch or pins, they seemed secure sandwiches.

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Here are some pics showing the layering & copper core....Really, I am trying to determine the approx age.  The link kindly provided suggests sanmai tsuba age is debated

  • Assuming the blade and fittings are original to the build...
    • Do the fittings provide a clue to approx. age... (shown previously)
    • The blade is rough, nakago is unsigned.... but assuming original to the tsuba, does the blade suggest approx. age?  Nagasa = 27.5", one mekugi-ana

 

Sanmai.Layers.01.jpg

Sanmai.Layers.02.jpg

Tang.01.jpg

Tang.02.jpg

Tang.03.jpg

tang.04.jpg

Tang.05.jpg

Sanmai.06.jpg

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Dear Bob.

 

If only things were that simple!  It is actually quite rare to find a sword and the koshirae that was originally made specifically for it.  Given that we could be sure of the age of the tsuba  then it still would not add anything to your knowlegdege of the blade as it is very common for koshirae to be replaced and/or modified throughout the swords life.  Sometimes this is the result of changes made while the sword was still in Japan, sometimes later by dealers and collectors.  It is very rare to find a koshirae of any great age though a tsuba from an earlier period added to a new sword is quite common.

 

For what it's worth I have personally always thought of sanmai tsuba as earlier rather than later but I can provide no evidence to back up my hunch, perhaps others have a more informed view on this. 

 

Your best hope of getting some thoughts about the age of the blade would be to post some overall shots of the whole blade without any fittings in the Nihonto section.  Given the condition the sugata is about all we have to go on as details of hamon and boshi will be hard to see.

 

All the best.

 

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I am without the experience of most of you above but I remarked before here in the Tosogu section that I once read somewhere (but I just can't find or recall where) that sanmai tsuba were riveted and held by fukurin prior to about 1600 when the Dutch arrived and showed the Japanese how to use solder. Presumably after that date rivets were no longer used ?

I didn't dream or imagine the information, I just can't verify it with a reference.

Sorry about that.

Roger j

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I have found this extract from "Sculpture on Sword-Furniture" by Captain F. Brinkley [1902] 

Here he is describing the work of the Goto masters.

 

"--In short, these records show that the first six Goto masters had a very large repertoire of subjects, and that it is altogether a mistake to speak of their productions as severely classical, or of their range of decorative motives as limited. They differed, of course, in the quality of their work, the third representative, Joshiu, being notably the coarsest and roughest chiseller among them. It is a theory implicitly believed in Japan that an artist's moral nature is reflected in his productions. Joshiu was a big, stalwart soldier. He fell in battle, the end he had always desired, and there is certainly something of the bluff man-at-arms in his style of carving. His most elaborate effort is said to have been a pair of menuki in the form of a procession of golden ants carrying silver eggs. But he preferred fierce dragons and angry shishi. His son Kwojo, the fourth representative, who worked from 1550 to 1620, is distinguished for precisely the quality which his father lacked, extreme accuracy of detail and delicacy of style. Up to Kwojo's time, that is to say, during the era of the first three Goto masters, the iroye (literally, colour-picture) process, or "picking out" with metal different from that of the general design, was somewhat clumsy. The preparation of efficient solder not being understood, the expert had to pin each tiny plate of gold, silver, or copper in its place. He accomplished this with such dexterity that the rivets were not visible, but really delicate work could not be done. In Kwojo's time a solder was discovered so good that a piece of metal fixed with it could be afterwards chiselled in loco. The use of this 'ro' (literally, wax), as the Japanese called it, made an immense difference in the quality of detail chiselling, and the uttori iroye (riveted plating) of the first Goto experts was finally abandoned. It is unnecessary to enter into any further analysis of the Goto masters' work. ---"

 

This would indicate 'ro' or solder [as we know it] appeared between 1550 to 1620 which is pretty early. The information does not detail the use of solder on Sanmai construction but does point us to a date where it could have been used from.

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I wonder if it has been made clear exactly how repousse designs were created ?

In modern times at least and I suspect in earlier times in Japan a mix consisting of pitch, plaster (of Paris ?)and possibly bees wax was heated and mixed together to provide a somewhat resilient but not brittle bed to lay the plate to be decorated by chiseling a design on, starting from one face. The warmed pitch mix was possibly an inch or two thick and contained by a rectangular or a circular boundary.

Shaped but not very sharp, (some domed) small chisel tools ( approx.4" or so long- 1/4" heads) were made to create the outlines and molded designs from the rear.

The metal and the pitch mixture base is heated, the metal turned over and re-positioned on the pitch bed and tidied up and refined from the other side, again using the chisel tools. This might be repeated more than once to reach the required effect.

The craftsman must be careful not to hammer and stretch the metal subject matter so that it gets damaged or holed. The metal tenses up when being worked but releases the tension and softens when heated.

I have done this work but over 50 years ago.

Someone like Ford Hallam might straighten out a point or two (or more) here.

I suppose what I wanted to clarify is that I don't believe that the shakudo or ? plates were just pressed into an existing mold but that instead each plate was individually crafted by the above techniques.

Anyway, that is my belief.

Roger j

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Roger you might be correct but how then is it that both sides of the tsuba have identical images, wouldn't that require enormous precision indeed, much much more work than hammering into a form? Not that I am an advocate for both sides being identical, it is rather boring. Surely there are examples where each side was made as you have described and they would have the freedom of two similar designs but not identical. There must be examples out there so please show us. [meaning the members] Is it once again a story of two 'levels' of construction, custom pieces and cheaper mass [but hand] produced? 

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I showed Ford one of my tsuba which I thought was quite good

For example I said how well the bird was carved but he said that if someone is carving birds almost every day for a number of years a low grade worker would get very good at carving birds

A bit rambley but what I'm trying to say is making identical images for a maker may not be that difficult

 

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And working from a traced pattern so that the original design remains identical for both sides or even multiple plate examples.

The Jpanese sanmai shakudo plates are relatively thin, so when softened by heat, not a lot of pressure would be required to create the raised, semi-relief designs before turning over to work from the reverse side.

My experience, not extensive, was using thicker 'gilding metal' which also needed heating to make it more malleable but further to that a hammer to impress the chisels and raise the design.

I can't see that the shakudo plate could be forced into a pre-existing mold, softened though it would be but never the less relatively firm. Not plasticine like.

Roger j

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Pretty sure that most sanmai tsuba were not produced with repoussé technique. Here below an example of an unusual large tsuba whose shakudō plates show lack of decoration pattern near the border. That's a proof that the plates were produced in standard dimension and then adapted to the "core" plate.
Nontheless that kind of tsuba should be old enough to deserve a ko-kinkō attribution.

 

01141a.thumb.jpg.7a6e46b3f4855599a29dc16c33ee1a21.jpg

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You would be surprised at how much stuff was made using "patrices" and "matrices", positive and negative moulds for thin metal stamping's. Its a technique that goes back thousands of years, for fine detail you hammer into the negative mould, usually using a lead filler or back. Most of the foils on Roman and Germanic items were done this way. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torslunda_plates

 

Silversmithing 101. D. Rushworth 22 BA Hons', 3d art and design

 

Google will disappoint, because google is silicon valley stoopid.

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Well, I just love the way these threads develop and bring out the various known facts plus the conjecture.

To produce the two shakudo faces of a sanmai tsuba using repousse techniques would be quite easy and straightforward. And for an experienced craftsman, relatively quick- probably less than an hour, once you have the required equipment and tool kit at hand which is used again and again.

As Dave notes above, if you were to have a positive and negative mould then that is another way to stamp out a design but the thickness of the plate  (be it foil or thicker) being decorated would be an issue and to produce the bronze 'master plates' would be a big effort in itself. Would it be worth the effort with such simple designs as waves, flowers, tendrils, sometimes animals or insects unless you were going to turn out many of the exact same design.

Do we see the exact same designs repeated time and again with sanmai tsuba ?

For mine, I will go with repousse.

Roger j

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  • 6 months later...

I know I am a little late in this thread, but I came across it having just acquired (bought recently in Japan - not by me unfortunately!) a tsuba with identical sides. A search for same-sided tsuba brought me here and I thought my tsuba might be of interest to the discussion. The obverse has gold highlights, which are missing on the reverse. Having learned from this thread more about sanmai tsuba, I can see the thin outside layers quite clearly within the hitsu and seppadai - though I'm not sure the attached photo does them justice.

 

Regards

 

David

 

 

8A.JPG

8B.JPG

IMG_2408 2.JPG

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This thread is quite old. Please consider starting a new thread rather than reviving this one, unless your post is really relevant and adds to the topic..

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