Which came first, tsuba or netsuke?

[Bugyotsuji]

Please look at this tanto tsuba. Pics posted on another site by a friend. The incised line following the outline of the Netsuke plate has me puzzled. Has a tsuba maker tried his hand at a Netsuke on the side? Or did the tsuba come first in its own right? Any opinions?

 

http://netsuke.websitetoolbox.com/post/ ... stcount=23

[John A Stuart]

I would think the tsuba was an already existing item adapted to a new life as a netsuke. Whether the undulating carved line is original, I am inclined to think so. Different isn't it? John

[Curran]

Not 16th century. More like 19th century Edo Higo?

Tsuba came first.

 

John S., on a different note I owe you a minor mia culpa in that you attributed a tsuba as Kaga Goto and I attributed it as Kyo Kanegushi. I am still not sure, but upon further looking it think that you may be right. I am overly quick to attribute particular stylization of dragon renderings with a certain shoami school and with kyo kanegushi work. Bad habit of mine, as I've seen a few examples of kaga Goto that render dragons that way.

Mia culpa.

 

Now back to regular fittings discussion.

[Bugyotsuji]

Cheers for the thoughts. Objectivity welcomed! :lol:

 

And the wavy line?

[Curran]

Wavy lie probably added later. I have no idea why!?

 

Say what you want about this Edo Higo stuff, while the quality isn't top drawer- they didn't suck. Not my cup of tea, but is pretty in the opinion of most people not steeped in Nihonto education. The wavy line seems out of character for Edo-Higo work, which is usually professional and clean if not particularly highbrow. Sloppy wavy line was probably done later.

[Bugyotsuji]

Thanks for the feedback. Pig in the middle, I passed back the information from this thread.

 

Probably hard to tell from photographs alone.

 

Leaving aside the quality of the Netsuke conversion, the owner tells me he had this tsuba checked by two leading Tsuba experts who took it in hand and pronounced on the Tsuba itself as "Very fine Higo school, dated Azuchi-Momoyama Period (1568-1600)".

[Lorenzo]

Piers, the link you posted doesn't show any image to me.. can you post the pictures here too please?

 

L

[Bugyotsuji]

Piers, the link you posted doesn't show any image to me.. can you post the pictures here too please?

 

L

 

Lorenzo, that is a recurring problem with that site's host. I'll get him to re-post the pics. They should come up in due course.... Many thanks.

[sanjuro]

Piers.

 

I like it! Wavy line looks original..... Have no idea why, but no matter. Its a curio of indeterminate worth and I wish it were mine. :D (donations gratefully accepted since I have blown my budget for acquisitions for the rest of this year).

[Bugyotsuji]

Pics in link seem to be up again...

[Curran]

Leaving aside the quality of the Netsuke conversion, the owner tells me he had this tsuba checked by two leading Tsuba experts who took it in hand and pronounced on the Tsuba itself as "Very fine Higo school, dated Azuchi-Momoyama Period (1568-1600)".

 

Right....

And when exactly did the Higo schools start?

 

Anyhooooowwwww.......

[DirkO]

Mia culpa.

 

Who's Mia and why do you blame her? :D

[Bugyotsuji]

Right....

And when exactly did the Higo schools start?

 

Anyhooooowwwww.......

 

Well, if you don't know then I certainly don't. I have spent half the day reading up in Japanese and English and it is far more complicated than I ever imagined.... as far as I can gather several artists and styles (Hayashi Seibei, Hirata Shippo-ha) were brought together in the 1580s and 1590s by Hosokawa Sansai from Kyoto, Edo and Korea, etc., but what we know officially as Higo work does not seem to come together fully until early Edo. Still, it's been a good learning experience!!!

[Curran]

Piers: yep. So "2 tsuba experts" saying basically that it is pre 1600?

Value = false It is just a question of where it went false, but largely irrelevant for our needs.

 

Dirk: Mia is a state of mine, er... state of mind. Er.... both actually.

And also sometimes a very pretty woman. Alas and alack, I am married, thus that Mia will not be mine.

[Bugyotsuji]

From a recent message I am given to understand that it has been reappraised by a third person knowledgeable in these areas, at around 1600 +/- ...

[Curran]

Options: (1) Our three mystery tsuba experts are all wrong or not that expert

(2) The owner reporting the 'three tsuba experts', is backing up his story with less that solid or true statments.

(3) I am wrong and this is a pre-Edo pre-Higo treasure with homogeneous iron and style to be found primarily in Edo Higo works.

 

Pick one.

I know which one I'll bet heavily on. I'll put $1000 on the table here and have this guy run it through the Tampa shinsa for a time and date from Gilbert and the Japanese.

Please remember and be forewarned I am a professional gambler for a living and very good at it.

[ububob]

Curran, before you take this into the street, just wanted you to know there is a really fast gun-hand here ready to back your play.

[John A Stuart]

I thought there was no doubt that the Higoryu was Edo period whether Hayashi, Shimizu, Nishigaki or Hirata branches and was influenced by Hosokawa Tadaoki Sansai and the chanoyu. As Sansai was mentioned before I remind us of him. John

[Bugyotsuji]

Well, I have no idea whether my esteemed colleague is a betting guy, and I do not know exactly what cards he holds, but I have passed along your answer, Curran.

 

Personally it does not bother me either way. He may be right, or you may be right, or the truth may lie somewhere in between. Each member of a Shinsa team may also have a different angle.

 

For me this has been a richly educational excercise, both as to the concept of Higo Tsuba and as to the nature of the gambling man!

 

As for the answer to the original question, it seems that we are all of the opinion that the chicken came before the egg, ie that the Tsuba, not a bad example of Higo work, came first, and the Netsuke was created later...

 

[Brian]

Well...quite interesting debate, and because the original pics will likely disappear sometime, I am unashamedly stealing them and posting them here so that this thread remains valid for the future.

 

Brian

[Curran]

John and Bob- thank you for adding in here.

 

I am not sure why I am standing the line on this one, when it is generally easier to let things pass as bar talk. I would love it if Darcy were around to verbally dissect and diagram it, but the simple version is I think that the follow up with a third tsuba expert dating to the same borderline historically impossible time of a relatively well studied and documented school... is a bit much. Fill this e-library with such stuff, and we might as well burn it down.

 

Clicking on the original length, has the owner moderated and edited his post since the discussion began? The dating is within tolerance at c. 17th century vs the claim and sticking to it of pre-1600.

 

------

 

I am serious about the bet. Offer stands.

[Ford Hallam]

I hate to miss out on a good fight...I mean debate and have watched this discussion with some interest, and a little amusement.

 

I was relieved when Currran stepped up to the plate to take a swing at the notion that this tsuba was alleged to be so early ie; pre 1600. The new date is suggested to be mid 17th cent. seems reasonable to me. I don't agree that the wavey line is sloppy nor that it may have been added later though. I think it's perfectly within the range of the aesthetic expression one see's in this school work.

 

A brief survey of the various gold nunome decorated tsuba illustrated in Mr Ito's excellent books on the Early Higo masters would lead me to suggest that the work under discussion is closely related to, or from, the early Nishigaki Kanshiro group. I've spent quite a bit of time this last year poured over these karakusa designs and replicating them myself so I think I may have developed a refined eye for the subtleties of the design pattern. The specific character of the tendrils, spirals and leaves is very similar to the work of Kanshiro II ( 1639 ~ 1717) and the iron texture and colour is perfectly consistent with that attribution also, in mnsho.

 

I don't think that awful washer arrangement that's been bodged on to it helps in any way to fully appreciate it as a tsuba though :? I'd have that off in a jiffy! Bloody netssookie...daft trinkets anyway

 

regards to all,

 

Ford

[Bugyotsuji]

Well, I have certainly not edited anything timewise since my first post. The nuance or focus may have changed somewhat. Your replies have been conveyed. There may well be something in the pipeline. Watch this space.

 

PS Ford, now leave your brother alone!

[OldKappa]

Hello, I'm the owner of the tsuba netsuke.

 

Thank you for having transferred the photos here, we have a serious server bug in the netsuke forum and the photos keep vanishing.

 

I AM NOT tsuba or even a metal expert. When I bought this netsuke through Yahoo Japan it was because I thought that the quality was much better then the Meiji copies normally seen. When I received it, I realized that the tsuba was of high quality while the netsuke mountings had been done by an amateur.

 

I showed the tsuba to London expert and he told me orally: 'Very early Higo school'.

 

I researched the Higo school on the net and mostly found what 'Bugyotsuji' did: "as far as I can gather several artists and styles (Hayashi Seibei, Hirata Shippo-ha) were brought together in the 1580s and 1590s by Hosokawa Sansai from Kyoto, Edo and Korea, etc., but what we know officially as Higo work does not seem to come together fully until early Edo". I personally assumed that very early meant meant in this case 1600.

 

I showed the tsuba to a Swiss expert two days ago and he also confirmed early Higo school.

 

Ford, if you agree not to dismantle (or put it back together) I can give the tsuba-netsuke to your brother Clive tomorrow in London and he could forward it to you for examination. Your verdict final.

 

My friend's Piers question about the wavy outline was never fully answered. It is a 'seppa-dai of unusual kiku outline' already in use in Momoyama. This time I did my research a bit better and I join photographic proof even though it is of a Ko-Goto tsuba.

 

Curran, do you agree to let Ford decide, if he agrees, whether it's early Edo or '19th century Edo Higo'?

[Ford Hallam]

Hi Old Kappa

 

sporting of you to jump in. :D I'd be more than happy to examine the piece....and restrain myself from removing the offending part even My opinion ought not to be taken as the final judgement but what I can do is examine and photograph the piece under very high magnification which will, at least, tell us quite a bit about the manufacturing of the steel.

 

Piers, you should know me by now any chance to take the proverbial.

[OldKappa]

Excellent.

 

THANKS Ford.

[Curran]

Old Kappa,

 

On my end, I do not know if the grapevine through Piers has been accurate. Glad you came in.

 

If I would trust anyone's kodogu forensics on this board, it would be Ford's. I do disagree with him now and then, but Higo has rarely been my cup of tea. His knowledge of it most certainly exceeds mine. Other than Ford and Ito-san, there is one other on this board that I know can make a better judgement on this than me. I am not sure if Michael Cox is available at the moment, but he has quickly become a Higo encyclopedia and has hit me as being particularly good with Nishigaki.

 

Ford: The nidai put the wavy line on this tsuba? My biggest tsuba purchase of the past year was a nidai Kanshiro . What surprised me most about it is how obsessive he was with a very very fine chisel. It made me go back through the Ito-san books and look at the nidai works over and over again. This is not to say that I've had many nidai works to study, and he certainly has worked with a variety of carving as some of his wave tsuba can illustrate..... but he seems to have had a bit of Obsessive disorder in that everything has to be just so. The wavy line just does not seem to me like something he would do.

 

I am posting a koshirae project that has been going on for 9 years and hope is finished before a 10th passes by. It is meant as a display koshirae using a mix of mid to late Edo pieces including both Higo and Edo Higo that are relatively close and can go on a kake where I won't be angry if it gets stolen or damaged some day. All the components were chosen because I regard them as mid level work. All are papered by NTHK or NBTHK, except for the Jingo tsuba (5th Gen work). I believe it is relevant to the discussed tsuba. All the NTHK papered ones still have their original worksheets as to shinsa opinion on the age.

 

It should make sense as to why I think mid-Edo Higo or Edo Higo. The 2nd to last photo is a variation using a 5th Gen Hayashi instead. When I see the paulownia tendrils, I tend to expect them to be this quality or better if mainline Nishigaki or Hayashi work.

[Ford Hallam]

Hi Curran

 

thank you for your very generous vote of confidence

 

With regard to that "offending" line :D ; I would be hesitant to judge it yet as the apparent delicacy, or lack thereof, of chiselled lines can be hugely effected by grime and rust build up. Also, I get a slight impression this is not just an inscribed line but that there is a subtle height difference from seppa-dai area down. The actual line itself though, is not uncontrolled nor accidental at all. It's quite skilfully done in such a way as to appear effortless or unconcerned...imo anyway.

 

We'll see what further investigation and analysis can show us. This may turn out quite interesting.

 

regards,

 

Ford