Bishu Osafune

[Jean]

Always talking about the most discussed quality of Muromachi "Bishu Osafune ..." swords, here is one today on Aoi-Art site :

 

http://www.aoi-art.com/sword/katana/06222.html

 

This one has a nengo + an ubu nakago with one mekugi ana (not so frequent) . It is not a mass production sword but expensive for our American friends (11k$) but worth it.

 

All Muromachi Bizen features are present and it is reflected in the price.

From the pictures, hada is correct even if there are some very tiny kitae ware/loose hada, the blade has been polished a few times so that the soebi has been polished away in some areas.

 

The only question : Kizu generally appear in the Hi and are seldom seen on pictures, I am not sure there are no kizu in the Hi, if one is tempted, he should inquire with Tsuruta san and ask him if it is TH level.

[Stephen V]

Thanks for sharing that Jean.

 

Damn, only thing is these types of posts are probably going to end up costing me some serious money.

 

:D

 

One will eventually "push me over the edge" and I will commit to having my Norimitsu Eikyo Bizen wak sent off for the full treatment that it deserves.

 

 

:lol:

[Jean]

Hi Stephen,

 

Here is my Eikyo Bizen wak Yoshimitsu

[Stephen V]

See,

 

You are doing it again !

 

:lol:

[Jacques]

hi Jean,

 

I don't like this (see circles) :

 

 

I hope this is not yaki ware.

 

 

je demanderai des gros plan de ces portions de lames

[Jean]

Hi Jacques,

 

I don't think so but as pictures can be tricky, the advantage with Tsuruta san is that you've just have to ask and he will answer you by return mail.

 

In fact when I buy a sword from him, I just send him a mail asking if there are kizu and what kind.

 

I always get a straight forward answer from him.

 

The only thing to be aware of when dealing with him is its conception of "polish blade". Unfortunately his standard does not always match mine :lol: :lol: :lol:

[Gabriel L]

Regarding the photo... the jpg compression is very high. So much so that it really distorts some areas of the hada. [EDIT]

 

Sword photos are one of those things that webmasters should be told need to be kept at very low compression; the details we want to see are too fine for anything else.

 

This isn't to say there are no kizu on this particular blade, it's just a point of consideration.

[Ken-Hawaii]

If you want to save a photo with maximum compression & minimum artifacts & data-loss (not quite lossless, but very close), if you're using Photoshop 5.5 or higher, you already have the answer on your computer. Adobe stupidly doesn't mention ImageReady, which is installed automatically with Photoshop, & does an incredible job of compressing large images.

 

I can go into more details if anyone wants to know more.