Spartancrest

Just an update on these Serpentine/Rain Dragon designs, I have found evidence of at least one rather obvious Iron casting of the design - there is no evident Izarae [cleaning a casting] Even for a casting there should have been some sort of 'quality control' - The asking price is way off the scale. I will leave it up to the viewer to find the faults - many.

I think the lack of inlay gives it a tooled leather look that is not unattractive. The motifs are very well done with no real damage - do we even know if there was extra inlay?

I have a guard [fairly ordinary] with the same cloud formation - this time over Fuji. The papered example shown, has two - possible three points of contact within the 'cloud', whilst the 'thunderstorm' example has only one. My Fuji example has three points of contact as does the more elaborately decorated example. I don't have any information of attribution on my examples. I would suspect there is a lot of 'cross-over' from school to school. I find the inlay work on the kaku-maru sukashi a bit distracting and unnecessary.

Just a picture save before it is lost, of the poor casting from post [ 6/08/2020 ] The seller was wanting 30,000 yen. You will notice there is no oni and the area otherwise undecorated in all the other examples has had a pine tree put in, Shoki has lost his applied face entirely.

Thank you so much Colin, I found your post [seems a bit more difficult since the changes] I do recall there was another example that had a round hole cut in it as well but I can't track that down as yet. As a bit of fun you could always set a small diamond in your Dragon - it would look like he was crying? 😂 Real Samurai bling! I must say I love the patina on your guard.

Yuk! Keep that parasitic fungus away from me!🤮

Yes the size of the eyes give it away - Cicada just before it transforms to the winged stage. They can drive you mad with the noise here, in an Australian Summer! We have Mole Crickets here as well. There are dozens of species of Cicada, perhaps their life cycle is what the design is alluding to?

Greg I have three iron daisho on record, iron examples tend to be in the minority, of the 34 I have, only 12 are in iron and of these, six make up the three daisho. One surprising thing is some of the smaller guards (sho) are not signed, so they may have been cobbled together. Particularly the two from "The Japanese Sword & its Fittings", Cooper Union Museum N.Y. 1966. The design does not match. [these pictured are both signed by the same artist]

I did a rework of the oeder collection a few years back [2017], translated the German text into English and showed every illustrated guard, all descriptions are translated into English, as well there is a collection of tsuba taken from the world travel collection of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria [who was assassinated sparking the first world war] The book is 100 Pages. "Japanese Sword guards, Decoration and ornament in the collection of Georg Oeder of Dusseldorf 1916" https://www.amazon.com.au/Japanese-Decoration-ornament-collection-Dusseldorf/dp/1364114488 https://www.dymocks.com.au/book/Japanese-sword-guards-and-decoration-and-ornament-in-the-collection-of-georg-oeder-of-dusseldorf-1916-by-d-r-raisbeck-9781364114480 https://www.abebooks.com/9781389339271/Japanese-Sword-guards-Decoration-ornament-1389339270/plp There is a critique by tsubakansho Posted on November 14, 2019 https://tsubakansho.com/2019/11/14/Japanese-sword-guards-decoration-and-ornament-in-the-collection-of-georg-oeder-of-dusseldorf-1916/ The Georg Oeder collection was lost in 1945 when the Russians took Berlin -

A little off subject but in the same vein of tsuba themselves being used as a weapon. I have just found a Japanese site that claims some tsuba were designed as sword breakers? https://nihontou.jp/choice03/tousougu/tuba/717/00.htm I had thought this pattern represented a snow flake, but this site claims: "A deformed collar shaped like a youkai that appears in manga. It's not just a design, it's meant to fold the opponent's blade with a dent and fold it, or to sharpen the blade, so the originator can be said to be a great warrior. It is a piece that you should carefully keep to remove the convex rust and keep it carefully as a good material for the actual stadium. Not only artistic design value, but also a valuable material of Tsuba as a weapon." The translation is as usual poor, but the notches do look like those on a European swordbreaker .- the catch being that if you did happen to snag a blade edge you would probably have no fingers left with which to hold your own sword!

Thanks so much Greg, I must admit I have had the image of your guard for a few years now. Out of interest did you pay the asking price? The other examples I have not seen before. At the moment I have over thirty examples as a data base [ four examples of my own ], Although they are all the same general design there are a few anomalies I have found. You will notice one of the curls on this example goes in the opposite direction to almost all other examples [I have found only two like this]. The 'mane' is sometimes thinner and the stalk of the eye ball can stick out at a different angle. A lot are signed Toshimasa but some are signed by other smiths and a number are mumei.

I read a post some time back dealing with a tsuba that had a hole drilled through the 'jaw' of a rain-dragon or serpentine-dragon, I was hoping someone could steer me in the right direction? The pictures below are of the type I am looking for - Also if anyone has pictures of the same style they could donate, it would be much appreciated. Thank you. I have noticed that a lot of past posts with links to eBay and others are no longer found because the sites remove them from their data base, I think when linking such sites a copy of the picture should be posted as well, so the link information is not totally lost. It is no effort to 'print screen' and paste to the post.

Thanks Brian, I think I will try making some jam this season too!💡

Richard, yes they are Chinese lantern plants [Physalis alkekengi] They belong to the nightshade family, the bright red fruit is edible and very high in vitamin C - However the rest of the plant is toxic. They are related to the Cape Gooseberry [Physalis peruviana] which are almost identical except for the golden yellow colour of the ripe fruit. I have grown Cape gooseberry for years and can testify they are very good eating - they grow prolifically and set seed very easy - full sun in good soil they form a low bush and are an annual in temperate regions and a perennial in the tropics. If you haven't tried one you should grow one just for fun. I wonder why they were used as decoration on a sword-guard? Was it as a food plant or because they do look like tiny Chinese paper lanterns? I should note the example of the first post from Natura/BUY describes the design as Aoi flowers which is clearly wrong.

Several months ago I released a two volume book "Public Domain Tsuba in the Metropolitan Museum" - within that book there is an unusual example of a Kawari-gata guard that appeared to have originally had a maru rim, now removed. I have just come across the full example for comparison. You can clearly see they are the same design and the 85mm example has a fairly robust rim [mimi]. The Museums example though decorative would be impractical for use, the finer elements being easily cut off and a risk of catching on any lose clothing.

Unryôsai Hiroyasu active ca. 1825 ? This example from the Inverclyde Council [not as well executed, I would judge] "An eighteenth century Japanese swordguard or tsuba. Its is made of yellow bronze and is decorated with a scene showing an elderly figure following a bullock being led across a river by an oni. Signed by Hiroyasu. - 1981.65 - © McLean Museum and Art Gallery, Greenock" Obviously the person describing the scene did not know of 'Shoki' and can't tell a bullock from a horse!

There is a very nice example in the Worcester Museum, the dimensions are 75mm x 70mm not much other information from the museum site but I think the pictures speak for themselves.

No worries Yas, your English is much better than my Japanese. 😃

Translation of Yasaka Azuma's last post in English [google translate, as usual google needs a little help] "Aside from gifts and brims (tsuba) for appreciation, if a craftsman considers the practical aspects of the blade, he should not make extreme inlays or reliefs that would interfere with the face stand area (seppa-dai)." "From the face of the face (seppa-dai) , it can be seen that even such a small inlay has not penetrated. The same was true for this bargain, with the agent winning the bid. Obviously, it avoids the faceplate (seppa-dai) and skillfully expresses the relief with iron and soft metal."

Tony I have seen Museum examples that have been copied straight from a photograph, in fact some Museums only display the omote side of the guard - this doesn't seem to worry the fakers, they substitute another design on the ura side, often nothing even close to the original. It is possible to find two Museum examples from two different schools/masters on the one fake guard. If the design appears in a good quality book and is 'famous' it will be copied, even modern pieces such as by Paul Chen have been copied [some very crude] and with omote views of two guards in one. The examples show two Paul Chen originals then the combined fake example [you will note no kogai hitsu ]. The hitsu seems to present some problems with design so some examples flip the nakago-ana so both sides line up the hitsu, see the third picture example [The middle one could not make up its mind]. These are easy to identify fakes some go to very much more extremes to fool the buyer.

https://www.jauce.https://www.jauce.com/auction/n420858425 A very poor cast example at a ridiculous price.

Robert S. With the 'Bell-ring' cricket or Suzumushi examples, of the three, two may be utsushi but the one on the right is a casting. https://www.jauce.com/auction/q385570272

I have this image of a dragon wrapped around a 'trident', similar design.

It is the same link. A bit hard to compare with only one example.

Due to what I see as excessive delivery costs overseas. I have to withdraw the book offer to any overseas buyers - it is cheaper for them to buy online, even if I could get the books sent to me free - which won't happen. Sorry for any inconvenience.