Axel Petersen collection

[Ian B3HR2UH]

I recently purchased the 1970 Sotheby auction catalogue of the Axel Petersen collection . It was a great collection of tsuba.

Does anyone know anything about Mr Petersen? I suspect he may have been the Danish writer , engineer and film director who died on the 8th of June the following year aged about 84.

[Ian B3HR2UH]

How soon we are forgotten ! As no one knows anything about Mr Petersen I will briefly set out what I found out about him.

 

Russell Robinsons 1962 book on the manufacture of Armour and Helmets in the 16th century Japan shows an armour owned by Axel Petersen Copenhagen . I believe this is probably the Axel Petersen born in 1887 who was an electrical engineer best known for his pioneering work in developing  " talking pictures " . As part of this process he directed movies in the early twenties .

 

On the collecting front he was purchasing tsuba and other Japanese art at London auctions in the forties and fifties, primarily at the H C  Clifford sale in 1947 and the E J L Gardiner sale in 1948 .

Sothebys auctioned a few of his pieces at a sale in Dec 1969 but the bulk of them were sold at their auction on the 10th of March 1970 . Four pretty impressive tanto and about 120 tsuba of Petersens were auctioned . The tsuba were top quality and at least one is now Juyo tosogu.

Bon Dale the chair of the Token Society , one of my boyhood collecting hero's , wrote the sale up in the Token Society's programme as attached .

 

The Katsuhira tsuba that sold for 1150 pounds was purchased by Peter Hawkins who sold  seven years later for over four thousand pounds , not a bad profit ! I wonder where it is now ?

The Myoju tsuba that set the London record wasn't owned by Petersen . I wonder if this went on to bigger things .

Mr Petersen died the year after his auction

 

 

[Spartancrest]

http://www.intk-token.it/forum/index.php?/topic/8584-scuola-umetada-埋忠/

From the different catalogue number this tsuba by Umetada Miōju must have been in another collection. 

 

   

Tsuba in sentoku, con inserti in oro eseguiti in hirazogan, mei: Umetada Miōju, 17-18 sec.  [Tsuba in sentoku, with gold inserts executed in hirazogan, from: Umetada Miōju, 17-18 century]

[Ian B3HR2UH]

Hi Dale , I think your illustration is from the Red Cross catalogue at which time the tsuba was owned by Mejor Everard Calthrop who was killed in action at Ypres on the 19th of December 1915