Yet Another Soten

[zanilu]

Hi to everybody

 

Several months ago I bought a Soten tsuba signed Goshu Hikone Ju Soheishi Nyudo Soten Sei (see attached pictures FT-0052-*.jpg).  

 

The tsuba is papered by NTHK as genuine Soten tsuba. 

A few information about the tsuba are:  

height 75 mm, width 70 mm, thickness at mimi 5 mm. 

Nademaru gata, kaku mimi with gold fukurin, ryohitsu plugged with gold. 

 

The translation of the NTHK paper should be something of this kind (the translation was provided by a Japanese speaking guys on INTK website - http://www.intk-token.it/forum/index.php?showtopic=8630&hl=): 

 

   Kanteisho

   Tsuba

   Soheishi Soten

   Original piece

   20th of January of the 25th year of Heisei Era (2013)

   Nihon Token Hozon Kai (NTHK), a non profit organisation.

   Miyano Teiji, director.

   Mei: Goshu Hikone Ju Soheishi Nyudo Soten Sei

           Made by Soheishi Nyudo Soten, living in Hikone, Omi province.

   Construction: Nagamarugata, Tetsuji.

   Design: Gassen no zu (battle scene).

                Uchiborisukashi no kingin iroe (perforated decoration painted in gold and silver).

   Dimensions: 7.5 cm height, 6.9 cm width.

   Additional information: Late Edo era.

 

 

In order to further my meager knowledge about tsuba I decided to study this tsuba comparing it to similar tsuba and to other papered Soten tsuba. The text reported hereafter is basically personal notes as well as the figures. In some cases part of the text is taken from books I have of from internet, if the authors feels them as infringement of their rights, please let me know and I will remove them from the post.

If you have any comment or additional information I would gladly accept it.

 

The comparison between FT-0052 and other Soten work is quite complicated by the sheer number of gimei and imitations. In fact, again according to Haynes[3]:

The first Soten had many students who helped him produce Soten style tsuba. In fact, during his lifetime, the demand for this style of tsuba became so great that he and his school could not keep up with orders. In Kyoto the Hirahiya school and, in Aizu, the Sohami school made Soten style tsuba to help fill the orders for the many requests received from all parts of the country.

 

Among the large number of tsuba signed Goshu Hikone Ju Soheishi Nyudo Soten Sei I was able to find only a few that are comparable, of similar design and with high quality pictures that allow a comparison of details. Of the few tsuba reported in Figures 1 to 6 only the tsuba of Figure 1 and the daisho of Figure 2 are papered. Comparing FT-0052 with the previously reported tsuba for the the workmanship, the way in which the samurai figures are realized and the level of detail, the closest match is with the tsuba of Figure 6. 

This is readily apparent by the details comparison reported in Figure 8.

The way in which the faces, the hands and even the hair of the samurai are rendered is practically the same. The armor outline, and ligatures rendering is identical between the two. This is also true for the way in which the weapons are represented with small round tsuba and decorations on the saya. The castle wall, made of hexagonal blocks, and the tiles at its top are rendered in the same way. 

As for the mei Haynes notes that:

... the kanji for “shi” ; in Soheishi is rendered in such a way as to replace its initial horizontal stroke by a lozenge-shaped component; this is a feature said to be common to most, but not all, genuine Soten work.

  On pages 62-63 and 64-65 of his Catalogue of the Dr. W. Fahrenhorst Collection, Inami Tomihike illustrates two tsuba that are attributed to Soten. The first of these is very similar, both in its design and its description, to the one being studied, while the second is almost identical. On both of these tsuba the character for “shi”; in Soheishi is written in the conventional manner of the three-stroke kanji, with a horizontal first stroke. 

 

The mei of the tsuba cited by Haynes[2] is reported in Figure 10f. The comparison between FT-0052 mei with Soten signature is quite complicated by two aspects; first the FT-0052 mei is partially unreadable due to wear and by the punch marks at the base of the nakago and second by the sheer number of gimei and imitations, as said before.

For the above reasons mei comparison was limited to tsuba with certification (NBTHK, NTHK) or reported as legit Soten tsuba by well known and respected experts in publications or elsewhere. The mei collected so far are reported in Figures 9 to 12. An exception, due to the similarity in workmanship, is the mei reported in Figure 12c from the tsuba of Figure 6.

As expected the mei analysis does not give any clear indication. The best, but still partial, matches are for three mei as reported in Figures 13 to 15.

In all the three figures, FT-0052 mei is sketched in central position with highlighted in green, blue and black the strokes with decreasing degree of similarity with those of the mei under analysis. The green strokes show a higher degree of similarity while blue ones a lower likeness. The parts left black do not match at all.

The mei of Figure 13 shows a good match only for a few strokes. The degree of similarity is stronger for the mei of Figures 14 and 15. The best match is, surprisingly (or not), for the last one, i.e. the mei from the tsuba of Figure 6, that is also showing the stronger similarity in terms of workmanship and design.

 

All considered my attempt to find an attribution more precise that a generic “Soten school” was doomed to fail from the beginning given the degree of uncertainity sorrounding this school. The additional information provided by NTHK. i.e. late Edo period, is not compatible with either the 1st and 2nd generation Soten masters (According to Sesko[10] the first master year of birth is around Enpo (1769) while the 2nd generation is traditionally

dated after the Kanen era, i.e. around Horeki (1751-1764) and Meiwa (1764-1772).)

 

After discarding the fist two masters we get lost in the sea of Hikone Bori tsuba signed Goshu Hikone Ju Soheishi Nyudo Soten Sei. The level of workmanship shown by tsuba FT-0052 set it well above the average Hikone Bori. Maybe we are looking a high quality Kyoto Hirahiya or Aizu Sohami “Soten”. That were excluded from the analysis in virtue of the attribution given by NTHK.

 

The similarities between FT-0052 and the tsuba of Figure 6 in both workmanship and mei is interesting. Maybe the two tsuba are from the same artisan or from the same group of artisans, like two sisters or cousins meeting at last.

 

 

[zanilu]

Additional images...

[John A Stuart]

While genuine Soten work is not relegated only to gassen carving, that is the most familiar style. What a minefield it is. I always look to the carving of faces to assess the quality, whether Soten or Hikone-bori etc. John

[Pete Klein]

They did some nice F/K also:

 

[Brian]

Fantastic post Luca, that must have taken a lot of time. It will be a great reference here for what good Soten looks like.

You may want to consider compiling it into a .pdf so that I can add it to the articles section?

[zanilu]

John

 

I will  take closer look at look at the faces.

 

Bian

 

The text is taken from a pdf file already generated with LaTeX.

As soon as the text is finalized I will be back to you with the PDF.

 

Luca

[Brian]

Thanks to Luca, I have uploaded an article version of this to that section....located here: http://www.militaria.co.za/nmb/forum/17-articles/

Nice reference for signatures and quality.

Thanks Luca.

 

Brian

[manfrommagnum]

Soten floral tsuba. I like it because it is not the typical.

 

 

mike

[Jorgensen]

I can add some pictures of my "Goshu Hikone Ju Soheishi Nyudo Soten Sei" Tsuba as well...  

 

[Spartancrest]

A long, long time to add to this thread. 

However I was doing some study of the Warsaw Museum collection of tsuba and found this guard:

藻柄子入道宗典製/ 江州彦根住
Sôheishi Nyûdô Sôten Sei/Gôshû Hikone Jû
transl.: made by the layman Mogarashi Sôten of Hikone in Ômi Province

 

What strikes me, is in the example in the previous post and this one is that the signatures are exceptionally crude and look like they were done like a finger in mud - is this at all normal for Soten signatures?

The crude mei also makes me skeptical that they can even be read correctly. What does the forum think?