Mass produced or genuine

[MaxT]

Hi, 

 

I'm a new, and honestly quite clueless collector. Early this week, I bid (and won) on a  tsuba at a Japanese auction site. I really liked the design and intricate craftmanship - and I thought I paid a reasonable price. 

Now, just one day later, I see an almost identical tsuba with the same Mei for sale at the same site and (coincidently?) same price. There are some small differences but overall the design looks like a direct copy. 

My question now is if this is common and nothing to be concerned about, or if this tsuba is just a "mass produced" item without any greater artistic value. (pictures attached)

 

Any insights are greatly appreciated. 

 

kind regards

Max

[Geraint]

Dear Max.

 

Several schools of tsuba makers used designs many times.  In this case your tsuba appears to be what would be called Nagoya mono or thing made in Nagoya.  These are made from an alloy different to shakudo which you will see has a brownish tinge to it.  Around the nakago ana there are usually quite distinctive tagane ato or punch marks.  The quality varies a great deal, some are quite well done and some are embarrassing.  In general the difference between these and a good kinko are the base material and crispness of execution, Nagoya mono are to a greater or lesser extent somewhat blurred and lack precision, see the waves at the top of your tsuba as an example.  The quality of nanako also varies but is generally low.  Signatures such as these two have are generally to be ignored.

 

Have a look here for more information, 

 

Hope that helps.

 

All the best.

 

[MaxT]

36 minutes ago, Geraint said:

Dear Max.

 

Several schools of tsuba makers used designs many times.  In this case your tsuba appears to be what would be called Nagoya mono or thing made in Nagoya.  These are made from an alloy different to shakudo which you will see has a brownish tinge to it.  Around the nakago ana there are usually quite distinctive tagane ato or punch marks.  The quality varies a great deal, some are quite well done and some are embarrassing.  In general the difference between these and a good kinko are the base material and crispness of execution, Nagoya mono are to a greater or lesser extent somewhat blurred and lack precision, see the waves at the top of your tsuba as an example.  The quality of nanako also varies but is generally low.  Signatures such as these two have are generally to be ignored.

 

Have a look here for more information, 

 

Hope that helps.

 

All the best.

 

Dear Geraint, 

 

thank you very much for the explanation! That is indeed quite disappointing. I was optimistic about this tsuba because the details looked to be much too intricate to be from a cast (see attached photo) and I naively trusted the sellers description. Aside from the cheaper material and fake Mei, is there any higher craftmanship involved? How are these details achieved? 

 

thank you for any further info

  

[Geraint]

Dear Max.

 

I did not mean to imply that your tsuba was not genuine.  It is.  This is not a modern casting, it is, as far as we can tell late Edo or perhaps earlier.  If you look at the nanako under a magnifying glass you should see that it is quite well done compared to other examples from this group.  Indeed sometimes these fetch quite good prices at auction and you quite often see them mounted on koshirae.  The better ones are really quite appealing.

 

With tsuba one needs to train the eyes and a detailed examination of your tsuba compared with say this one, should help you get started.  https://nihonto.com/3-1-22/

 

 

Don't assume that you will ever finish this journey, there is far more to learn than can be encompassed in one lifetime, that is part of the delight!

 

All the best.

[ROKUJURO]

Looking at the SEPPA-DAI without any traces of use, the over-abundant use of gold colour, and a few technical flaws, I am not so sure that this TSUBA is Japanese.

NAGOYA MONO have some age, and most of them have been used for a while, and this left some traces. Also, NAGOYA MONO were finished by hand (not by high-class artisans!), and they often were a bit crude in the smaller details (faces...). The gilding technique of that time was different.

On his type of modern TSUBA I do not see traces of hand-tools (TAGANE), and seemingly this one was never mounted.

I may of course be wrong in my observation.

Dale will probably be able to provide a number of images of similar TSUBA. 

[vajo]

You tsuba is for me Hamamono work (Nagoya mono). Genpai war crossing uji river its a common theme.

Some say work for tourists in meji times. 

 

 

It was very popular in the late edo/meji time. Maybe you ask if it is fake or modern reproduction? The term mass produced could hit nearly every tsuba from all periods. The price depends in quality. Those workshops made all level of tsuba. High and low quality weak metal tsuba.

 

The second picture looks more like a modern copy to me. But i can't judge it from your picture.

 

But some of these tsuba get papers (Kyo-kanagushi) at all. So don't worry. 

As long as it's not a cheap Chinese copy from a smelter. But with the current copper price, even those aren't cheap anymore.
 

 

Edited Wednesday at 08:00 PM by vajo

[MaxT]

42 minutes ago, vajo said:

You tsuba is for me Hamamono work (Nagoya mono). Genpai war crossing uji river its a common theme.

Some say work for tourists in meji times. 

 

 

It was very popular in the late edo/meji time. Maybe you ask if it is fake or modern reproduction? The term mass produced could hit nearly every tsuba from all periods. The price depends in quality. Those workshops made all level of tsuba. High and low quality weak metal tsuba.

 

The second picture looks more like a modern copy to me. But i can't judge it from your picture.

 

But some of these tsuba get papers (Kyo-kanagushi) at all. So don't worry. 

 

Thank you for your answer, I seem to have been somewhat blindsighted by the details and fine lines. These should not be possible with a simple casting process - so I really hope it is at least not a modern copy. Any insight on how these were made? the gold color is obviously painted, but were these struck/ pressed like coins? Some parts like the river lines definitely look like they were carved/hammered...

[vajo]

Max when it is painted not fire gilded or patinated it is a cast copy. Sorry. The Japanese are masters in gilding and metalwork. They didn't paint tosogu parts. Only in wartime they painted gunto parts mostly iron. Cooper was patinated with niage. Cheap tosogu from the edo period was lacquered with urushi mostly black. But this is rare to find and now some worthy.

Edited Wednesday at 08:31 PM by vajo

[MaxT]

3 minutes ago, vajo said:

Max when it is painted not fire gilded or patinated it is a cast copy. Sorry. The Japanese are masters in gilding and metalwork. They didn't paint tosogu parts. Only in wartime they painted gunto parts mostly iron. Cooper was patinated with niage. Cheap tosogu from the edo period was lacquered with urushi mostly black. But this is rare to find and now some worthy.

Sorry, the part about paint was just guesswork as I have only pictures to go by. I thought it might be paint because you can see it "spill" at the tail in the picture above and how detailed it is for gilding. But I have no idea about these processes. Please excuse my ignorance.  

[vajo]

Max your picture is not to good to judge. The color of fire gilded gold is different to modern electro plating. You must have more tsuba in hand to see the difference of all that things. There are so many possibilities for metalwork. 

[Exclus1ve]

Everything has already been said correctly here. It's from the same series, I think:

Sometimes they were even cast, and then they were finished manually. It usually has no value, they were made in large numbers with minimal labor costs. An imitation of the Soten school, but in this case the signature does not play any role.

[MaxT]

Well that's quite a bummer... If the original goal was to sell it to gullible foreigners they surely succeded in the end.  

[Charlie C]

15 hours ago, MaxT said:

Dear Geraint, 

 

thank you very much for the explanation! That is indeed quite disappointing. I was optimistic about this tsuba because the details looked to be much too intricate to be from a cast (see attached photo) and I naively trusted the sellers description. Aside from the cheaper material and fake Mei, is there any higher craftmanship involved? How are these details achieved? 

 

thank you for any further info

  

Hi Max,

 

I do not collect tsuba and have no opinion on the forging age of this piece, just wanted to add that people often underestimate how fine the craft of modern (not even contemporary) massively made copies can be. One can often find, as Vajo pointed out, poorly made cheap (~10 USD) tsuba and conjecture that all copies are poorly made, but even in the 19th century there were 浜物 decent enough to camouflage itself into a purely handmade one. I suggest that the best strategy to avoid such a loss is to watch long sufficient before purchasing to establish one's own standard as to what is good enough and what is not, in this case, maybe even post on this forum before purchasing.

 

I hope this little setback will not prevent you from your tosogu adventure.

C. C.

[MauroP]

I’m quite in disagreement with what has been written so far. Here we have a tsuba with the classic Soten signature. I’m not able, from the photos, to judge whether it is a genuine late-Edo tsuba or a modern copy, but it is certainly not a Hamamono/Nagoyamono. Those are tsuba definitely mass-produced, but they weren’t even trying to look like something else. Here the question is: genuine Hikone tsuba or a fake.

[Robert S]

3 hours ago, MaxT said:

 

Thank you for your answer, I seem to have been somewhat blindsighted by the details and fine lines. These should not be possible with a simple casting process - so I really hope it is at least not a modern copy. Any insight on how these were made? the gold color is obviously painted, but were these struck/ pressed like coins? Some parts like the river lines definitely look like they were carved/hammered...

If the casting process is recent, it is possible to achieve very fine lines, etc.... so there is a possibility of Chinese manufacture - the fact that there was almost immediately another similar one for sale is a bit worrying.  If on the other hand it is an older casting a good bit of work has been done on it to clean it up.  As the similar examples found are not exactly the same, just quite similar, so far it looks more likely that it was cast, and then customized.  What I'm noticing is that key figures look identical, buy details such as waves and textures are not.    However, it certainly does look like export/tourist grade.  The clue I see on that is that it's what I would call "gaudy", yet the quality is not great.  Traditional tsuba are rarely gaudy, but if they are the level of craftsmanship is likely to be very high - masterpieces of inlay, gilding and metalwork  Gaudiness was mostly (but not entirely) aimed at western tastes

[Spartancrest]

https://www.skinnerinc.com/auctions/3046T/lots/1058

   Those these are all of the same general pattern, they are not identical and all show small variations. Like many of this type the tagane-ato punch marks around the nakago-ana were probably added in the workshop when manufactured, to give the impression that they had been mounted but are usually just cosmetic - some would have later been mounted but not many.        

 

         

 https://auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/g1197874839   https://www.jauce.com/auction/g1197874839  Auction still running.

 

Another type that depicts the same scene are usually described as Hamano - the Hamano ones are identical and must have been mass produced but are often not finished to the same standards. I would much rather the hand finished Soten signed type!      These can be expenive rubbish.

Edited Thursday at 02:54 AM by Spartancrest
More images

[Exclus1ve]

11 hours ago, MauroP said:

Here we have a tsuba with the classic Soten signature. …but it is certainly not a Hamamono/Nagoyamono. 

The theme that I have attached above, in my opinion, gives an idea of what and how it was done. To be specific, it's a fake, a copy!
At least because this product has nothing to do with the Soten school and its followers, the manual work here is minimal, as a rule, only fine-tuning and refinement.

The exact date and place of production will not change its essence in any way, because the production process itself and the quality are distinguishable from manual labor.

Just a cast coloring…

Edited Thursday at 11:10 AM by Exclus1ve

[Matsunoki]

The Japanese are experts in finding a quick way to create the impression of quality work especially during Meiji when the demand for their true high quality work (metalwork, tsuba, kozuka etc) boomed.  Imo these are Meiji mass produced tsuba aimed squarely at the gaijin of the day (and later) who  could not tell the difference. Any that are found actually mounted have most probably been mounted long after Samurai days….again to enhance the “flashiness” of a sword. 
We encounter exactly the same issues with other metalwork art where some short cuts quickly became so convincing that they still fool “experts”. A great example is Miyabe Atsuyoshi using shiremono pressings with clever patination to mimic true takazogan often of great apparent complexity but taking a fraction of the time. Such pieces still go through major auction houses at huge prices ……so no need to feel too bad about falling for a fake tsuba.

[Exclus1ve]

This copy doesn’t have a signature, but it’s nicely aged)

Edited Thursday at 12:19 PM by Exclus1ve

[ROKUJURO]

Just think about when these "flashy" TSUBA appeared fitst in the market. If they had been made in MEIJI era, they would have appeeared in numbers long before.

But exactly this type of TSUBA with very good casting and guilding technique surfaced rather recently in my observation.

We have been discussing the fact that modern reproduction/copying techniques have become worringly good, and the fact that we are now troubled by such an item is the proof.

[Spartancrest]

 

M.A. Anisimova (St. Petersburg) Collection of Japanese tsuba in the collection of the VIMAIViVS

  Translation of the Russian - 

Fig. 2. Tsuba with the image of samurai. Soten school. 19th century. VIMAIVIVS DIOF 0131/6