PietroParis

Chris, Could you please clarify the concept of "price-testing pieces" to a novice? Today I watched online the Bonhams sale, in which a substantial fraction of the lots went unsold. In many cases I noticed that the auctioneer set a starting price much below the lower end of the estimate, and received numerous bids from the audience, but declined to sell the lot unless the bids reached (or at least got very close to) the lower estimate. I was wondering what the logic of this time-wasting strategy was, and why the auctioneer did not just start from a price closer to the reserve. Do you mean that the seller sets an unrealistically high reserve just to see how high potential buyers will go? Where is the profit for the auction house in this strategy? Thanks for your help, Pietro

Hi John, thanks a lot for your comments and also for the link to the Oxford/Ashmolean website, it looks really informative! It will take me a while to explore it in detail... For the rest, I'll check out the Peabody book, I suppose it can be found second-hand. Another book that was recommended to me is "Sukashi Tsuba" by M. Sasano (1972), which also can be found second-hand (although a bit on the pricey side). Finally, browsing around the forum I learned about this thesis on the namban style, downloadable from the Durham University website: http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/4129/ Cheers, Pietro

To my totally untrained eye, the first crab in Mauro's post above looks nicer than both the one from Marius' 2010 post (#3 in this thread) and the one I saw yesterday (#8 in this thread). Cheers, Pietro [EDIT: added side-by-side pictures]

Don't worry, the thought of buying this tsuba - for more than 1000 EUR! - never crossed my mind... I took the pictures because I think it will be useful for my "education" to research any pieces that, for one reason or another, attract my attention. By searching "crab tsuba" in this forum I found the picture posted by Marius, which is exactly the same design but with gilding and (to my eye) a finer carving. Cheers, Pietro

Hi All, I am a newbie in this forum and I am not sure it's good etiquette to revive a long-dormant thread. If it isn't, please accept my apologies. I would like to contribute two pictures of a very similar crab tsuba that I saw yesterday in an antiques shop (sorry for the atrocious cellphone pics including the fingers of the shop owner!) To my untrained eye, the carving looks somewhat coarser than in Marius' crab. It was described only as "17th century sukashi tsuba", and sold for a quite hefty sum (which, at this stage of my education, I would not have been prepared to pay even if I had really liked the tsuba). Anyway, it was basically the only Japanese item in a shop devoted to Chinese antiques, thus there might be doubts on the reliability of the description... Cheers, Pietro

Hello Jean, thanks so much for your welcoming words, and also for the reassuring news about the tsuba. In my searches I had indeed noticed some similarity with the nanban style, but I believed that the decoration of my tsuba was not "arabesque" enough to fit in the category. Clearly I have a lot to learn... I also agree with you that the "flowers" of the auctioneer's description could very well be birds. As to the fissure, I am quite sure that repairing it would cost more than I paid for the tsuba in the first place. I will just accept it as part of the life of the object (no big deal if it affects its value, I am not planning to resell it anyway). This said, I will certainly keep learning from this forum and try to develop my taste and experience before embarking in new purchases. Thanks again for your kind help and Best Regards, Pietro

Dear Forum Members, I have been fascinated for a while by some aspects of Japanese art (mainly shin hanga, more recently netsuke) but I am a complete novice for what concerns sword fittings. The only book I could find so far on this topic is Joe Earle's "Lethal Elegance" on the collection of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, and I will be grateful for any suggestion for further reading. The reason why I am posting here is that recently I felt like buying a sukashi tsuba (for no special reason, other than I find the openwork decoration the most pleasing to my aesthetic sense), and after following a few non-specialized auctions of Asian art in Paris I ended up with this one: I would greatly appreciate any insight on the origin and quality of my tsuba. Both the estimate and the price I eventually paid were on the (very) low side compared to what I see in antiques shops, thus I don't have particularly high hopes/expectations. The diameter is about 7.5cm and the thickness about 4mm. The auctioneer's description (my translation from French) was: "Edo Period (1603-1868). Iron maru gata with maru bori openwork of flowers in their foliage. Unsigned". I know by now what "maru gata" and "maru bori" mean. I presume that the dating should be taken with some skepticism (although other tsuba in the same sale were described as "Meiji Period", "20th century", and even "cast iron", i.e. there was at least an attempt to differentiate them). I made some searches online but I could not find any item with a similar design (I don't take this as a good sign...) If I understand correctly, the presence of sekigane and of tagane marks should indicate that the tsuba was once mounted on a sword, although of course they might also be spurious. Finally, I don't know how to interpret a small fissure (about 1cm long) near the back edge of the rim - see the third picture - but I have a bad feeling about it... Please let me know if I should post any other pictures to help in the identification of this tsuba. Again, I will be very grateful for any comment by this forum's learned members, and I won't be devastated (but maybe a bit disappointed!) if it turns out that I bought a tourist piece... Cheers, Pietro