Tsuba arrived

[Pete Klein]

For the uninitiated, Mr. Lawson is 'THE' go to guy on Kinai. He's a walking encyclopedia on the school.

[Brian]

Good to know

Really wish we could compose a list of who specializes and has knowledge of what field. But no-one will admit they are an expert in anything, and probably won't allow anyone else to volunteer them either :lol:

Makes a huge difference though, expecially when you read comments and know that the poster has been studying that field for years.

 

Brian

[kaigunair]

Well, this is interesting. Seems like more than a few days worth of posts are missing from this particular thread....

 

The one I posted that was a few days ago basically thanked James for letting me view his collection of kinai tsuba, and that he has got to write a book on the subject.  

[Brian]

No...just 5 days like I said.

And glad that a lot of those posts were left behind in this thread.

 

Here are the relevant ones:

 

 

It is a school with 2 branches and 6 generations of smiths. Very well recognized and with stunning work when you find the really good ones. Malcolm Cox has a great page with much of this info on it as well. http://www.users.on.net/~coxm/?page=TsubaIII

It it not a regional attribution as David said but rather a very popular school.

For the most part we tend to see the mass produced examples in the US with similar motif of dragons or Aoi leaves. However there were masters in this school and really fantastic pieces that are not usually seen because they are in private collections etc. I actually did a display and lecture for the NBTHK-AB at San Francisco where I showed about 50 of these pieces from my collection. I know there were a great many folks who came up to me afterwards and were shocked that Kinai produced these quality of tsuba. Perhaps others who attended that can also give their opinions as well here.
 

Kinai = always Echizen Kinai
Echizen = not always Kinai (in the case of Akao etc and others made in Echizen) location based

- James

 

 

Wasn't able to attend the lecture, but wanted to thank James for the post show private viewing at his table. It was really an amazing and eye opening experience seeing top examples of this school. This is a collection where I left feeling the need for so much more time to really examine each piece and pick his brain over the school. Unfortunately some lookie-lou's were present when they should have kept moving along and I needed to get back to the lighting table. He has got to put out a publication on this collection. A definitely high point of this past show, along with finally meeting Ed in person.

- Junichi