Leaderboard

Here is my 98 with black lacquer saya and what remains of the leather saya cover.

These days, with CNC milling machines becoming less and less expensive, it would be pretty easy to carve a horimono like that dragon entirely automatically, with just some minor post machine clean-up. The hardest part isn't the carving, it's creating the 3D model... and if you have an old one to 3D scan and replicate, there's just some clean-up and translation of the scan to do. CNC machines do for carving what AI does for video - pretty soon you just won't be able to tell the difference without a microscope. But the quality of nihonto has always been in the steel production and forging anyhow, and that, so far, is beyond a computer :-).

A bit of cash needed for this as well! just over $3,000 USD https://www.1stdibs.com/furniture/asian-art-furniture/metalwork/antique-Japanese-meiji-period-tsuba-decorated-box-dish-fujii-yoshitoyo/id-f_45586682/ Or if you shop around https://jacksonsantique.co.uk/product/Japanese-komai-style-box-dish-fujii-yoshitoyo/ £1,400.00 which is $1886.92 USD - - It pays to look around!!

Anyone have an extra 12k-15k to drop on a tsuba art print? 😆 https://www.bonhams.com/auction/31839/lot/2/philip-taaffe-b-1955-tsuba-figure-1995-96/