REMARKABLE SIGNED SOMIN TSUBA

[Tlognaws]

Hi all, this is a tsuba i recently acquired, mei is Somin with Kao. No paper with it.

 

The work is very remarkable to me. Katakiri bori technique presented impressively. 

 

I would like to share and happy to hear all of your opinions on it.

 

Cheers 🥂!!

[Infinite_Wisdumb]

I learned this recently for Somin - no papers, no Somin

 

 

[Infinite_Wisdumb]

mine even has the same katakiri as yours - that I marked with with red dots

 

[Tlognaws]

Thank you for your comment! I'm not sure if there is a name for these tiny dots. It seems that they're quite popular in some katakiri bori practicing 👌

 

Below is a different photos from better daylight and angle!

 

 

[vajo]

Nice Tsuba. Thanks for showing.

[Kurikata]

A tsuba I wish to have in my collection....

[thutson]

Beautiful workmanship, congrats on a lovely piece!

[Tlognaws]

7 hours ago, thutson said:

Beautiful workmanship, congrats on a lovely piece!

 

8 hours ago, Kurikata said:

A tsuba I wish to have in my collection....

 

9 hours ago, vajo said:

Nice Tsuba. Thanks for showing.

 

Thank you for all of your kind words!

 

Actually it's part of a Yokoya Daisho Tsuba set, the other signed Soyo with Kao. 

 

I'm more interested in the one signed Somin, since the katakiri bori technique presented on it almost flawless and nearly perfect at every stroke we can observe.

 

Interestingly i realised there's a big difference level of skill between two pieces of the set. Focusing on stroke lines of the botan below on each tsuba is an example.

 

 

[Tlognaws]

 

[Tlognaws]

[Infinite_Wisdumb]

Amazing!

[1kinko]

Shiro-shibuichi?

[ROKUJURO]

It would be very interesting to hear Ford's opinion on the workmanship of these TSUBA.

[Tlognaws]

15 hours ago, 1kinko said:

Shiro-shibuichi?

I'm not sure, it is quite standard grey color of shibuichi in hand. Maybe my phone camera enhanced the tone a bit too much so that it looks slightly whiter than normal

[Tlognaws]

16 hours ago, ROKUJURO said:

It would be very interesting to hear Ford's opinion on the workmanship of these TSUBA.

 

Sure, @Ford Hallam it would be great if you could share come educated opinions on the pieces 😃

[ROKUJURO]

Jesse,

you wrote: "..mine even has the same katakiri as yours - that I marked with red dots...."

I always thought that the asymmetrical grooves cut with a special chisel were what is called KATAKIRI BORI. Am I wrong?

[Infinite_Wisdumb]

1 hour ago, ROKUJURO said:

Jesse,

you wrote: "..mine even has the same katakiri as yours - that I marked with red dots...."

I always thought that the asymmetrical grooves cut with a special chisel were what is called KATAKIRI KOMI. Am I wrong?

you are not wrong!  Now I know that it is KOMI

 

Thank you!

[ROKUJURO]

Yes, I was wrong. It is of course KATAKIRI BORI technique. Off the internet:

....KATAKIRI BORI is the use of lines with a specific view of recreating the brush strokes in SUMI ink drawings. The depth and width of the lines are varied to provide a play of light and shadow. In Western terms it may be referred to as shallow relief engraving or line engraving. 

It embodies a wonderful contradiction in that it looks simple compared to other types of carving however it is regarded as more difficult because there is no ornament to hide bad composition or technique.... 

[Ford Hallam]

I've hesitated to comment as I'm feeling a bit uneasy about these two pieces.

 

There's a great deal to say that can be argued indefinitely but what I will say at this stage and that I feel is objectively correct is ;

 

Given the apparent age of the works, referencing the lives of the alleged makers, the shibuichi is perfectly clean, with not even a trace of aged patina or other dirt, grime old oxidised wax etc. The 'nashiji' grain appears as clear as though it was patinated yesterday. 

There's a lighter halo around the seppa-dai. What this tells me is those lighter patches had suffered heavier oxidation/corrosion than the rest of the plate. The whole plate was then subsequently completely re-polished to redo the patina. Any area that had suffered excessive oxidation etc. and had not been adequately prepared will now patinate lighter because the alloy on the surface at those areas is now silver rich and copper depleted. It's always the less 'noble' metal that is sacrificed in these sort of corrosion effects. So in my opinion this is a new patina and the whole tsuba have been lightly re-surfaced/polished. 

 

It is possible that they have merely been a little heavy handidly over-cleaned but I see a few other blemishes that all point towards more towards a, less than expert, refinish rather then over-clean.

 

I'm a little bothered by the excessive encroachment of the chiselling onto the seppa-dai areas.

 

On the whole the designs are all fairly convincing and essentially straight out of the Yokoya design book, so to speak. You can easily find identical examples in the existing documented works.

 

Looking closely at the actual cutting though I can't silence a niggling hesitation in my mind. Kata-kiri work is by it's very nature meant to be bold and expressive. A strained attention to super accuracy is not to be expected nor probably desired. But what we would expect is a degree of fluency and compositional integrity.

It's a bit like a fine drawing by a noted artist compared to a careful traced copy of the same. Like a good drawing good kata-kiri ought to exhibit a sensitive and dynamic relationship and interplay between every single cut or mark. And in that vein each and every cut ought to be alive and expressive in terms of its shape. How does it being there add to the work? There's so much to say and discuss but it's late here so I'll leave it at that for now.

 

It

[Tlognaws]

6 hours ago, Ford Hallam said:

I've hesitated to comment as I'm feeling a bit uneasy about these two pieces.

 

There's a great deal to say that can be argued indefinitely but what I will say at this stage and that I feel is objectively correct is ;

 

Given the apparent age of the works, referencing the lives of the alleged makers, the shibuichi is perfectly clean, with not even a trace of aged patina or other dirt, grime old oxidised wax etc. The 'nashiji' grain appears as clear as though it was patinated yesterday. 

There's a lighter halo around the seppa-dai. What this tells me is those lighter patches had suffered heavier oxidation/corrosion than the rest of the plate. The whole plate was then subsequently completely re-polished to redo the patina. Any area that had suffered excessive oxidation etc. and had not been adequately prepared will now patinate lighter because the alloy on the surface at those areas is now silver rich and copper depleted. It's always the less 'noble' metal that is sacrificed in these sort of corrosion effects. So in my opinion this is a new patina and the whole tsuba have been lightly re-surfaced/polished. 

 

It is possible that they have merely been a little heavy handidly over-cleaned but I see a few other blemishes that all point towards more towards a, less than expert, refinish rather then over-clean.

 

I'm a little bothered by the excessive encroachment of the chiselling onto the seppa-dai areas.

 

On the whole the designs are all fairly convincing and essentially straight out of the Yokoya design book, so to speak. You can easily find identical examples in the existing documented works.

 

Looking closely at the actual cutting though I can't silence a niggling hesitation in my mind. Kata-kiri work is by it's very nature meant to be bold and expressive. A strained attention to super accuracy is not to be expected nor probably desired. But what we would expect is a degree of fluency and compositional integrity.

It's a bit like a fine drawing by a noted artist compared to a careful traced copy of the same. Like a good drawing good kata-kiri ought to exhibit a sensitive and dynamic relationship and interplay between every single cut or mark. And in that vein each and every cut ought to be alive and expressive in terms of its shape. How does it being there add to the work? There's so much to say and discuss but it's late here so I'll leave it at that for now.

 

It

 

Wow, thank you Ford! Your comment amused me alot, like something makes my day. Very interesting and full of educational information.

 

First of all, it's my bad trying to catch every detail of the strokes on the pieces with daylight outside, using my phone camera, so that i let the sky reflected on surface of the shibuichi, make it turn into a weird bright white color.

 

This can be explained with the clip below, which has just captured another tsuba of mine, very similar shibuichi surface, identical color and texture with the Yokoya daisho set. We can see that with different angle, the shibuichi will turn back to its actual look. ( Sorry I'm in a business trip now, so i don't have the set with me, except this little one i keep along)

 

https://youtu.be/ElI...?si=dp6KyHVvE7lzEIXo

 

 

[Tlognaws]

Luckily i find out in my phone storage an inside lighting photo of the Soyo one to compare. Let's have a look

 

 

[Tlognaws]

This is how the shibuichi surface look like under my microscope

 

[vajo]

8 hours ago, Ford Hallam said:

I've hesitated to comment as I'm feeling a bit uneasy about these two pieces.

 

Given the apparent age of the works, referencing the lives of the alleged makers, the shibuichi is perfectly clean, with not even a trace of aged patina or other dirt, grime old oxidised wax etc. The 'nashiji' grain appears as clear as though it was patinated yesterday. 

There's a lighter halo around the seppa-dai. What this tells me is those lighter patches had suffered heavier oxidation/corrosion than the rest of the plate. The whole plate was then subsequently completely re-polished to redo the patina. Any area that had suffered excessive oxidation etc. and had not been adequately prepared will now patinate lighter because the alloy on the surface at those areas is now silver rich and copper depleted. It's always the less 'noble' metal that is sacrificed in these sort of corrosion effects. So in my opinion this is a new patina and the whole tsuba have been lightly re-surfaced/polished. 

 

It is possible that they have merely been a little heavy handidly over-cleaned but I see a few other blemishes that all point towards more towards a, less than expert, refinish rather then over-clean.

 

 

Ford is this not that what your work is about to restore old pieces, removing scratches and give the pieces a new patination? I wonder why you problemise it now?

Its a fine piece, it looks good and the condition is perfect. 

 

[DoTanuki yokai]

I dont have much knowledge but from my observations the whole piece is in my opinion not on the same level other Yokoya works i have seen are.

It is just my impression from viewing the pictures online and would like to know what you other guys think about this. 

For example crumbled lines and the always visible appearance of the chisel marks inside the lines, sometimes they are intentional but not on this piece in my opinion.

I like the Tsuba anyway dont get me wrong and i just want to learn. 

[vajo]

Proverb

A good stonemason makes deep cuts, not cuts.

 

I like the other more Christian. That tsuba hits not my taste.

Your own taste decides what you like and what you spend your money on, not the opinion of others who say what you should like.

[Tlognaws]

On 11/17/2023 at 4:35 PM, vajo said:

 

Ford is this not that what your work is about to restore old pieces, removing scratches and give the pieces a new patination? I wonder why you problemise it now?

Its a fine piece, it looks good and the condition is perfect. 

 

Thank you alot Chris, for your kind words 🙏. I enjoyed quite lot of @Ford Hallam researching documents and understand why he concerned about the patina on pieces very much. It's such a pain if there's any unprofessional treatment on good pieces, it could end up with misunderstanding and insensitivity on intending creation of the maker originally. I'm very appreciate that.

 

One strange thing i noticed on the SOMIN mei one is that there are alot of lines were finished with 2 different cuts, we can see it very clearly. And they were created very carefully and masterly, then shown up very intentionally. I wonder if this is normal or not, since this is the first time i have seen one katakiri bori practicing like that. Is that what Ford mentioned in the comment?

[Ford Hallam]

On 11/17/2023 at 9:35 AM, vajo said:

 

Ford is this not that what your work is about to restore old pieces, removing scratches and give the pieces a new patination? I wonder why you problemise it now?

Its a fine piece, it looks good and the condition is perfect. 

 

 

I would have thought my implication was obvious.

 

Here we have two tsuba purporting to from the hands of the father of the machi-bori and his son. A pretty big deal. Yet they have no papers and have evidently been completely repatinated, or the patina is relatively fresh, hence the very clear nashiji.  This ought to give cause for hesitation.

On 11/17/2023 at 8:21 AM, Tlognaws said:

This is how the shibuichi surface look like under my microscope

 

This is a beautiful illustration of very clear nashiji. The appearance of a fine silver network surrounding the copper matrix. 

 

And while, yes, I do on occasion have to resort to a complete repolish and repatination it's really important to try and achieve a suitably aged and mellow appearance in the final result so that while the work is 'restored' it never the less retains a sense of its age. 

 

 

As for trying to understand the qualities of kata-kiri perhaps that's only truly possible if one practices it oneself. This is a little utsushi I did about 30 years ago, it's the same size as the original version, ie; much smaller than this image. The composition may be familiar to some, a bit ambitious for a first attempt perhaps. 😜

 

 

But in any case, I was asked for my opinion. I took the time to offer some very carefully considered observations. Do with it what you will. I honestly have no interest in what anyone choses to believe in these matters. After all, as the saying goes; "beauty is in the eye of the beholder". 😎

 

[vajo]

That's right, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
However, I no longer wonder why less and less beautiful pieces are shown here when in the end you are just looking for a fly in the ointment and raising doubts everywhere. Even if there is obviously no real doubt. Because the fact that it was and is re-patinated is a fact. And it's not exactly cheap either. The restorers often have a hard time with one another. Everyone stakes their claim.
Almost everything that is shown to you in terms of high-class pieces is hardly in its original condition. And even Sasano has stowed his pieces in shoeboxes under the veranda to help out. That too is a fact.

It's a great tiger, no question.
Everything is perfect, but to me it looks "European", like everything made in the West. The expression is not Asian or specifically Japanese. Still a great job.

[Brian]

Thank you for your valuable input Ford. Myself and many others appreciate it and the time you take to give it.
 

[Matsunoki]

Hi Ford @Ford Hallam

Methinks the famous Unno Shomin Juyo Kanzan and Jittoku tsuba with tiger on the reverse was your inspiration?

Brilliant Utsushi 

All the best

Colin