zanilu

Maybe I was too quick in posting: Green One: Sasano, Masayuki, Kagamishi Tsuba, 1980 Red One: Sono Heiji, Higo Irogane Tsuba, 1984 Blue One: Sasano, Masayuki, Tsuba To Koshirae, 1987 Questions about Publisher and translation still pending. Luca

Hello to all of you I am looking to bibliographic information about these books: Author, publisher, year of publication the usual stuff. To your knowledge there are translation in English? Thank you in advance for any information Regards Luca

Stephen I am aware of Mr. Varshawsky site. In fact I used it as a reference for the historical prespective in the evolution of the definition of Shingen tsuba. Not all the pictures of the website have enough resolution to allow to see the presence of lacquer on this kind of tsuba. On some it seems there is lacquer on others not. On higher resolution pictures found on the web or on books in my library there seems to be no lacquer. I have no definitive answer at the moment. For sure on the piece in my collection there are no traces of lacquer in the woven brass wire region. Regards Luca

Hi Stephen No traces of lacquer on this piece, and as far as I can tell from pictures also on similar pieces from the same class of Shingen. If you have seen examples like this one with lacquer it would be interesting if you can post some images. On the contrary there is a lot of black lacquer on other styles of Shingen Tsuba. Like this one for example In the close up shots you can see some corrosion on the iron core but nothing major. If there is relevant corrosion in other ares I can not tell. The Tsuba is coming straight out of Japan. I do not know nothing about it's whereabouts before that. Regards Luca

Thank you Roger Regards Luca

Thanks Brian No need to do it. I am working on a review on Shingen tsuba similar to that I already did for Kaga Yoshiro. Regards Luca

Good morning everybody! I have in my collection this Shingen tsuba: Dimensions 86.9 mm x 87.4 mm, thickness 4.6 mm at seppa-dai, 5.7 mm at mimi. It is rond shape (marugata - 丸形) with a three layers structure of brass and iron (tetsu/shinchū san-mai shitate - 鉄・真鍮三枚仕立). The the main decoration is made of woven brass wire (sinchū harigane amiko (真鍮針 金編込) while the central brass plates and the fukurin (覆輪) are decorated with small flower-like punch marks (kohana ishime-ji - 小花石目地). The two hitsuana (櫃孔) are also lined in brass. The following aspects can be noted: The tsuba has an iron core that extends from the nakago-ana (中心孔) to the brass fukurin (覆輪). A magnet is continuously attracted to it going from the center to the outer edge. The iron core seems to be a solid plate underneath the woven brass wires of the main decoration of the tsuba. See Figure 2. The “radial” wires are passing through holes in the central brass plates that are staggered between the omote (表) and ura (裏) sides. Those on the ura side are located approximately halfway between those on the omote side. See Figure 6, where the holes on the omote central plate are shown as withe dots. The corresponding holes on the ura plate are located at the end of the red dashed lines. The holes show, in most cases, a lot of burr on their edges, see Figure 3. Underneath the “radial” and woven wires, here and there, a “stray” wire can be seen running on top of the iron core at an angle relative to the “radial” wires, see Figure 1.77. These “stray” wires seem to have a diameter similar to those of the woven wires. Looking from the outside toward the center of the tsuba in the area where the central brass plate ends where the “radial” wires are we can see that below the holes in the central brass plate there is a sort of cavity in the iron core, see Figure 6. The thickness of the brass plates is approximately 0.6 mm, for both the central one and the fukurin. The “radial” brass wire have a diamter of approximately 1.2 mm, the woven ones of 0.6 mm. This is what I have seen so far. What follows is just speculation based on the above evidence and some imagination from my side. The arrangement of the “radial” wires, with the staggered holes in the omote and ura central pates, suggest that they are not individual wires but are rather a single wire woven in some way around the iron core. The iron core shall have some kind of opening allowing the wires to go from the omote to the ura central brass plates as shown in Figure 7. The wire is then woven around the circular crown between the openings and in the center and the edge of the iron core to form the “radial” wires. To keep the omote and ura brass plate are extremely important for the weaving of the “radial” wires thus they are likely held in place and secured to the iron core by brass pins hammered and chiseled to hide them. Figure 2 Figure 3 Figure 4 Figure 5 Figure 6: Schematics of FT-0142 obtained by tracing on top of overlapped images of the omote (表) and ura (裏) sides. The woven brass wires are not reported for the sake of clarity. Blue stands for the brass plate, red for the brass wires and grey for the iron core plate. The “radial” brass wires on the omote side are reported continuous lines. Those on the ura as dashed lines. Figure 7: Possible shape of the iron core with holes passing through to allow a single brass wire to be woven around the circular crown between the holes and the core edge. The portion of wire that are not visible are shown in purple. What is your opinion? Do any of you have additional information on the construction of this kind of Shingen tsuba, maybe from damaged ones? Please feel free to contribute with any idea or fancy hypothesis! Regards Luca

Thank you for your answer Richard @rkg! It is in time like these that I miss the input of @Guido Schiller. We had some interesting discussions about Heianjo-like washida school pieces... Thank you for the appreciation @Bazzabut I think this piece will stay with me for a while Regards Luca

@Jorgensen your pictures look pretty good to me. I struggled a lot to produce acceptable pictures, at least to me. I always prefer to take my shot with a dark background inside a lightbox made of withe plastic with led light placed outside to provide a diffuse light. To avoid sharp shadows the tsuba is suspended 50 mm above the background. I always place a white piece of paper inside the shot to do color correction with gimp taking the white as a reference. The two sides of the box opposed to the light sources are obscured with a sheet of the same material used for the background to avoid reflections. To avoid stray light I shot in a darkened room. The results are pretty good in terms of color. Here is an example from a recent post of mine. Regards Luca

Dear all I would like to have your opinion on my most recent acquisition. It is 83.5 mm x 78.6 mm, thickness at seppa dai 3 mm, at mimi 4.1 mm. It has hira zogan of brass and silver. From the shape, distribution of thickness, the quality of the mixed hira zogan, the quality and color of the iron I am inclined to attribute it to Washida shcool rather than Heinajo zogan or Kaga Yoshiro. What is your take? Regards Luca

I am with you Brian 100%!

Bells are are cast and ring as bells! I have personally cast iron pieces at high school in my time and they ting as bells when hit. My two cents... Regards Luca

Just personal considerations Vitaly. Submitted to the NMB to have opinion from other collectors... Regards Luca

I have recently acquired a new NBTHK papered Kaga Yoshiro tsuba: This is, to me at least, an interesting piece on several aspects. First, the meaning of the sukashi decoration. There is a suhama gata with something that looks like leaves or a plant of some kind. Maybe this is somewhat related to those composition representing island or shores. For example from https://www.aisf.or.jp/~jaanus/deta/s/suhamagata.htm: "Also suhama 州浜. A shape made up of three rings. Used in garden design and landscape paintings. An imitation of a sandy beach. Usually the shape is twisted or elongated to create an original variation." If any of you has a different interpretation or, if I am spot on (that I really doubt), can you help to better describe the desing? Second, this is the first papered, Kaga Yoshiro tsuba with ji-sukashi outside of the brass inlayed roundels, that I have seen. If not for the two, rather small brass inlayed mons I would have been inclined to a Heianjo zogan attribution due to the lack of any egraved line shadowing the karakusa inlay, typical of kamon Yoshiro tsuba. Also the sen zogan is not usually found on Yoshiro pieces. Third, there is a lot of remaining lacquer on the surface of the tsuba: Interestingly the lacquer is also filling the carving of the sen zogan seat where the brass inaly is missing: Does this mean that the tsuba was lacquered more than once, and at least one time after the loss of a portion of the sen zogan? Could the multiple lacquer hypothesis explain the lack of the engraved line shadowing the karakusa inlay? Could it be completely filled with lacquer to the point that it is no longer visible? I would have discarded this last option if not for this particular reported hereafter where a small portion of the line is visible: Maybe, as often the case, I am over analyzing things. Your opinions is more than welcome. Regards Luca P.S. The close ups are obtained with a cheap USB microscope, the enlargement factor is between 48x and 128x approximately. Nothing to do with the professional pictures taken by @rkg.

Hi This is an old thread: In the mean time others popped up. Of the reported example none is a cast reproduction, as far as I can tell. All are traditionally made. Regards Luca

This is my preferred one, maybe a little bit nerdy... https://www.jabref.org/ You can manage file in .bib format for LaTeX and other formats as well. Runs on Java and thus there is no mobile version. Regards Luca

Me too! Easy to search, browse and mainlyto carry around! If available I prefer to buy pdf also to save space at home. I only buy paper books if no electronic option is available! Regards Luca

It sounds like a good idea! I second it! Due to space issues I always opt for electronic versione if available... Regards Luca

Bravo Pietro! Grazie Luca

Grande Mauro!

Me too Curran! I am really envious of @MauroPdatabase! Regards Luca

Curran your point is clear! Il tuo Italiano è migliore del mio Inglese! Your poit is clear. Thank you! Regards Luca

Dear Curran. Maybe not being English my mother tongue make me read meanings that are not there... In your sentence I read that NBTHK would paper it as Kyo-kanagushi but you somewhat imply that another organization or authority in the field would not give the same attribution. Regards Luca

That was exactly my point Simon. The unknown author you cited seem versed in the subject but without a solid bibliography to support it you can not rely on it. Regards Luca

My impression is that we are putting too much stock in the information we get from the web. We see a page based on sources from other pages etc... and we build new theories out of the blue. Where are the sources from scientific literature? There is any evidence Even the account cited from reddit by Simon, even though it sounds most reasonable and well researched is not coming from a scientific publication. We ahve to be very careful... Luaca