Kaga Zogan/kaga School

[zanilu]

As a side line on my research on a shinchu zogan tsuba I had the chance to gather some information about Kaga Zogan also called Kaga School. 

I have found that the two terms are used interchangeably on the sources I have found. Personally I prefer Kaga Zogan as it seems to me more on spot.

I have tried to summarize what I have found so far in a single place and to create the family trees of the families that seems to have worked in the Kaga fief creating what was called Kaga Zogan. I have used mainly the Nihonto Koza sixth volume as a source of information for the trees.

 

I have created the document in LaTeX and exported it in pdf for your convenience.

 

The summary is far from perfect would be glad if you can give me some feed back on it.

Any correction or additional information is welcome. If there is any comment/correction/addition I will add it to the document and post later a revised version.

 

For the page numbering please consider that the document is part of my collection catalog appendices. For the same reason the bibliographic section is larger than required.

The document formatting is quite rough sorry about that.

 

Regards

Luca

 

kaga-0.0.4.pdfFetching info...

[TETSUGENDO]

Luca,

 

Very kind of you to make this availble to the board members, most appreciated!

 

-S-

[zanilu]

Steven

 

 Just giving back a small fraction of what I get from the board.

 

Luca

[Brian]

Stunning work Luca! Well done.
When you have finalized any changes, would love to add it to the articles section.

[zanilu]

Sure Brian. No problem.

 

Let's wait for comments.

 

Luca

[Curran]

Hi Luca,

 

That is a great read, far better than my own notes.

 

Attached is a Tokubetsu Hozon Kaga I own. All the gold is wire inserted into carving and polished. In the sukashi you can see the depth of the wire.

 

 

[zanilu]

Nice piece Curran.

If you are willing can you share more pictures of your tsuba?

I would love to see it omote and ura.

If you agree I would add it to my summary since I have found the pictures of only another Kaga zogan tsuba papered by nbthk (I assume yours is papered given the background of your picture...).

 

Regards

Luca

[Curran]

Hi Luca,

 

PM sent.

[TETSUGENDO]

  Luca, here's a piece from the Musée Guimet, Paris you can add.

[Soshin]

Hi Luca,

 

I have download and skimmed you document.  I will take a more detailed look later if I have time and provide feedback as requested.  I have been very busy as of late with starting my own Japanese fine art and antiques business.  Here is a NBTHK Tokubetsu Hozon example of a Kaga Zōgan tsuba made for a tantō that was once in the personal collection that I later sold about a year ago.  The based metal of the tsuba is a dark shibuichi which contrast nicely with the gold inlays.  I estimate its age to be from the middle to late Edo Period.   I obtained it awhile ago from Curran.  I have more information that you might think is helpful on my websites.  The web links are listed below in my signature.              

[Curran]

Yes, that was my prior one. The pine bark too  .

It was a little later than the one I currently have, but had the classic slight dish dip and then small mountain swell of the seppa dai. If I remember correctly, the kogai ana was also exceptionally nice.

 

In the partial exchange, I got a very nice tsuba from David that I still enjoy.

Thank you David.

[Surfson]

Very nice, thank you.  I didn't realize that that type of superficial inlay is referred to as kaga zogan.  

[Curran]

I subdivide Kaga into:

 

Kaga Zogan

Kaga Kinko

Kaga Goto

 

The zogan is distinct and can be very pretty designs, usually of nature themes.

http://www.wakeidou.com/publics/index/318/

 

I prefer the Kaga Kinko tsuba as more refined and appealing to me,

but sometimes Kaga Goto menuki are phenomenal to the point of making mainline Goto menuki look a little poor cousin.

Another member of the NMB has (or had?) some phenomenal examples including a Noh play pair that required magnification to grasp the full depth of talent in their ultra fine working.

[TETSUGENDO]

[Mantis dude]

Hi all,

Been a while and I haven't been on this site for way too long. Been trying to catchup and what do I see but a post about a school I obviously really hate (that's sarcasm just in case you weren't sure). Here is a bad pic of some tsuba that are kaga. Top row is iron and kaga goto example. I posted them before just so happens they are similar to 2 tsuba on the same page of the kaga taiken (i can't remember exact name of book/bible and I'm too lazy to get up and get it). I actually have a tsuba i wanted to post on this topic but that will have to wait for another time. If you have any other mantis kaga pieces just send them to me and do a good deed it will make you feel good. Thanks Luca for the pdf. All the best.

Ken aka "The Mantis Dude"

[TETSUGENDO]

Quite the congregation Ken, good to see you back!

 

-S-

[zanilu]

Thank you to all of you.

 

Just to keep the document as uniform as possible it would be great together with the pictures you can add the references (the book from which you take the scan, the museum and so on...) and maybe the dimensions if available.

 

Luca

[b.hennick]

Good to see you posting again "Mantis Dude" aka Ken.

[Mantis dude]

Luca,

I will get you the info and if you want i can send individual pics. But I move slow.

 

Steve& Barry thanks for the welcome back. I always check in just might be a month or 2 late. Granted not exactly an active way to participate. In fact i still need to look at older posts. I saw kaga and went to this topic.

 

of course I must inform everyone of my "mantis dudeness". There was a time when I was famous (haha). I had guys telling me about mantis fittings all the time. My mantis minions- Now it's mostly just Barry and he is veering off into steam punk mantids (Barry couldn't reply because of technical email issue). Now I even go online and find others owning mantis fittings (Mino fuchi kashira do not count plenty to go around for all). The world has changed.

 

Just to stay in the realm of the topic attached are some fuchi kashira (another bad photo sorry). The fuchi only is similar to the tsuba inlay although there might be too much glare to tell. The other set I'm not sure who did it, sort of a mino and kaga combo and lastly another set not totally sure about but have seen others like it described as kaga inlay. Of course comments appreciated.

" The Mantis Dude" aka Ken

[zanilu]

Ken

Having pictures and information for each tsuba separately would be great to help me keep track of things.

 

There is not need to hurry. Job is demanding at the moment and I have little  time to spare so the revision of the document will take a while.

 

Thanks to everyone.

 

Luca

[zanilu]

Dear All

 

I have finally incorporated some additional examples provided by the community.

I would like to thank you for your contribution. I have not included all the picture you sent me, only those with a certain and proved background. I mean those with known provenance, i.e. published on books or catalogues or papered.

 

I would like that the pdf file I have put together ends up to be a sort of reference for Kaga zogan. Thus I avoided any opinion from my side citing all sources for the text and the pictures. In this way the reader will have a clear picture of who is considering what to be Kaga zogan without having to trust the writer (I have no authority in the field and I know what I do not know). In this way I hope that the reader would be able to form his own opinion. 

 

The pdf is not yet complete. Reading the text you will see a lot of question mark where kanji is missing. Some of the kanji is in red meaning I am not sure of it. If you want to contribute it I will gladly add it to the text.

 

If any of you have comments or correction please let me know.

 

Brian. If you want to move the file in the articles section feel free to do so adding the link to the thread.

 

Regards

Luca

kaga_zogan-0.0.6.pdfFetching info...

[Brian]

Thanks Luca, will do that on the weekend, and update as the file is updated. Very nice indeed!

[JohnTo]

Luca,

I've been away from the NNB for a while and have just discoved your Kaga pdf.  Excellent piece of work with kanji in the texts and references at the end.  Published info don't get better than that.  Thanks for all your work and making it available to all.

I was interested to see the tsuba in B.5, C with a fuchi/kashira attached to it, in the Boston museum.  I have just bought a sukashi tsuba with a kashira rivited to the seppa dai and was thinking to myself 'What sort of idiot would do that'.  Guess there were at least two.

 

great work, thanks again, John

[b.hennick]

Hi Luca:

Thanks for the work and continuing updates. When I opened this version it was labeled Appendix B. The page numbers were confusing. I looked at an earlier version .04 and it was called appendix A. Is the pdf maker changing things like autocorrect keeps changing what I am trying to type in a text message?

[zanilu]

Hi Barry.

The difference in the numbering of the pages and the appendix is due to the fact that the pages are extracted from my collection catalog. When I have generated the pdf I had also included in the Latex source file a chapter about shinchu zogan. So the numbering is different. To create a stand alone pdf require a little bit of work. I will try that for the next release.

 

Luca

[b.hennick]

Thanks for the explanation. I'll wait for the update.

[Pete Klein]

This is a set of Kaga Goto TBH shi shi menuki I acquired recently:

 

[Pete Klein]

Here is a Kaga Goto Hozon kogai:

 

 

The theme is salt production houses.

 

PS:  I believe the set of menuki which Curran Campbell was referring to above formerly belonged to me and is now in the hands of Fred Guyer and was included in a recent KTK catalog.

[zanilu]

Thank you Peter.

As I understand it Kaga Zogan was influenced by Kaga Goto but is distinct from it.

Awesome pieces anyway!

 

Luca

[Brian]

Love those menuki Pete