The Great Spider

[goo]

I would like to present my most recent work accomplished with help from Spartancrest who chose the design, did the research to confirm dimensions from the collection curator at the V&A museum where the original is kept and provided the Kanji so I could have a proper mei.   

Dale and I did some careful planning to create this Utsushi and there are some details I wish to explain that make this work uncommon.    As Dale describes it The spider is a problematic design done in this manner because it is difficult to place the legs in a way that make a usable tsuba.  

 

The design is based on the Legend of Watananbe who killed a great spider. 

The project took about six months to complete.  

All of the work was done by hand using only hand tools and finishing stones The eyes and stinger are Shakudo.  The original of this piece is asymmetrical I went to great effort to make my work symmetrical as a way to distinguish the piece as a copy.     Funny thing is though despite all the effort my piece ended up asymmetrical as well as if fate or karma predestines this design to be that way.     

 

[Spartancrest]

For those people interested in the original piece from the V&A as well as another version that was found in the process of the search. [may be the daisho pair?] 

 

PS. Any help I contributed was minimal - the praise for the WORK should all go to Gustavo, who went to extraordinary measures to get the metal from the correct period and has the technical skill to see the project finished. [I only found some images which is all I am really good at.]

 

Now there are THREE BIG SPIDERS! 

[Robert S]

Magnificent work!

[Dan tsuba]

OMG Gustavo!  Amazing work!

[DoTanuki yokai]

What material is the Tsuba made of and it would be nice to also know the size of it ? 
Nice work of a fun (From my 21century viewpoint) design.

[goo]

A bit of trivia on this project, the jewelry saw blades I used to cut the design are WWII era German mfg.   The story goes like this my friend Niel is Armenian Jewish descent.  During the war his uncle Pierre a highly skilled jeweler was swept up in the Holocaust.  His capturers being driven to details discovered that he was useful, pulled him from the barracks and supplied him with vast amount of tools and materials.   During Pierre's incarceration he escaped five times.  His work was so highly prized creating baubles for the officers they refused to shoot Pierre and would instead put him back in the workshop.  After the collapse of the German military Pierre secured all the stuff and moved to New York.   Niel gave a lifetime supply of Pierre's left over sawblades as a bonus for some work I did for him.

[Spartancrest]

Dimensions from the V&A  "The dimensions for this object from our records are given as ‘3.5 in by 3.9 in’, this would be 8.9 x 9.9cm."  No thickness was given but I think Gustavo and I thought 6mm was appropriate.

Gustavo's ingot that he used for the tsuba   "The composition is as follows copper 89.37%,  zinc 4.34%, tin 3.86%, lead 1.75%, iron 0.68%.    The lead content changes from one end to the other, the small piece is the highest at around 2.5%.     The zinc and tin content should give clues as to the origin of the metal because not every group of people made bronze in the same way. " Gustavo might correct this as he did some extra work on the metal.