Recycling And Embellishment Of Old Tsuba?

[Peter Bleed]

I have recently become interested in the possibility that older iron tsuba were embellished, decorated, and repurposed during the Edo period. Has anyone discussed the possibility that older iron guards were pimped out by Edo kinko?

Peter

 

[rkg]

Peter,

 

I'd posit that while certain kinds of work (adding fukurin, resizing, adding/plugging hitsu ana, fixing a web, etc) was pretty common (probably almost every collector who has more than a few tsuba has an example (or 10) of these in their collections), others like adding nunome, etc I think were a lot less common than we like to think - things like adding nunome, etc is usually a pretty brutal/time consuming process (you have to depatinate the whole tsuba, fix any problems/add the doodads and then repatinate after your mods for the end result to look "right"), and I'm not sure that people would do it lightly as the cost might well be a significant fraction of having a new piece made....

 

On top of that, I'm not sure how you could definitively tell if those kinds mods were done later or not.  If the whole piece is "fixed"/repatinated/etc - how are you going to tell - the piece will mostly look like it came from the time of the last mod. Aside from doing some kind of isotope analysis on the metals it seems like you're reduced to a lot of hand waving about how stylistically things aren't consistent in some way or how the work looks like it was done by multiple people, etc.

 

That said, I've owned some old kinko pieces that that appear to have been "pimped out" (gold mon adhered to the piece, etc).

 

Hopefully somebody else has some examples of what you're looking for

 

Good Luck,

rkg

(Richard George)

[Peter Bleed]

Richard,

Thank you for your response. And I take your point, but I remain unconvinced.

I am currently looking at a sample of katchushi tsuba that include a few unembellished guards that are basically just like the far more common types that have a bit of nunome or Heianjo type brass inlay. It is easy for me (naively, I'll admit) to see these embellishments as additions on older iron discs. We DO know that there was trade in old sword fittings at flea markets etc during the Edo period, We also know that lots of tsuba-ko started with iron plates made by guys who  specialized in producing them. You are certainly  correct in pointing out that addition embellishment would be work, but that is what those guys did. I think It is likely that a skilled specialized could rather easily drop bit of inlay on a finished tsuba. That's what those guys did! Maybe it was apprentice work.

Beyond all that, I have to say that a lot of mid-Edo embellishment just looks like hack work. We all like Heianjo brass but I'm sure that a guy who was set up to knock it out could cut a bit of vine, lay in a piece of fine wire, pound down a V-shape leaf and sell it for the cost of dinner.  And then there is all that awful gomoku-zogan that shows up on old iron guards. Maybe it was some kind of retro punk stuff that appealed to the urban masses or returning travelers who needed trinkets to bring home from the City. But it seems a long way from Yamato Damashi!

Again, thanks for your response.

Peter

[Bazza]

Hey, steady on - I like gomoku-zogan.  Can't tell you why, and I wouldn't go to the ramparts over it, but to me gomoku-zogan have a certain (fill in the right French word)...

 

Retro punk stuff - I like it...

 

BaZZa.

[TETSUGENDO]

-quelque chose.

 

-S-

[Bazza]

Steve,

 

I think I am pleased that you didn't say quelque chose de bizarre.

 

Anyone else??

 

BaZZa

[Peter Bleed]

Dear BaZ,

Well, maybe I was trying to be a bit incendiary with my comments about gomoku zogan. Some of it has a bit of charm, but to my eye it ALWAYS looks like something that was hung on an older plate. I can't suggest a French word for it, but to place it in a term d'Aus I think of it as something like Chicken Parm.

Peter

[John A Stuart]

This Kamakurabori tsuba has silver embellishment that is, to me, unnecessary and detracts from a nice object. John

[TETSUGENDO]

BaZZa,

 

Not bizarre at all, I'm  one of those  odd people who likes a GOOD Gomoku-zogan, when well done it's quite attractive.  BTW, 'je ne sais quois' works as well.

 

-S-

p.s.-Agreed John, that is ugly, although someone will look at that and think.....how beautiful!

[Pete Klein]

John - I'm not so sure that is Kamakura bori work.  It looks closer to a Hoan inspired tsuba by it's use of acid etching to get the design.  The plate looks too dense to be KKB also.

[John A Stuart]

Hmmm, something to consider for sure, Pete. John

[Peter Bleed]

I'm with Pete - and John - of this.

My first reaction was that this is a Hoan plate - - that got whored up by a later embellisher who knew how to add a bit of glitter.

It also speaks to my larger point that some/lots of "old iron" tsuba were available to later Edo period metal workers and used by them to produce fancy stuff. Our challenge is figuring out how to treat these later embellishments. Should be ignore them, remove them, or embrace them - - if we like them.

Peter

[Ford Hallam]

For what it's worth I'm of the opinion that Onin guards are actually merely old tosho guards given a new lease of life with a fancy import alloy that was suddenly all the rage at the start of the 17th century.

 

And I have a sneaky suspicion those curious minimalist sukashi on tosho guards might also be much later additions... He, he, or subtractions. I think this because I really can't see where that sort of simplified and abstracted type of design work came from if we are to accept them as original to the earliest tosho tsuba.

[TETSUGENDO]

Considering the lack of the usual 'line' to follow, your statement concerning Onin tsuba does make sense....it's a very well reasoned possibility.

 

-S-

[Steve Waszak]

John,

 

Might you have an image of the ura of that tsuba?  I would agree with Pete that the plate look less like Kamakura-bori than something Hoan-esque. 

 

Cheers,

 

Steve

[John A Stuart]

Sure, a mirror image. John

[John A Stuart]

The thing is with Hoan there seems to be a couple of types. Yakite with really dense iron and a tosho type more granular plate and the fancies. Kamakurabori always seemed to me to be like a pressed shallow impression more felt than seen. Carved or etched? I think more by abrasion (by stone or grit) of some type, a lost metal process. John

[Steve Waszak]

Thanks, John.  I certainly wouldn't describe this as Kamakura-bori.  Acid etching at work in this tsuba. 

 

Sorry, but I couldn't quite grasp what you meant be "fancies" in your post here...

 

Cheers,

 

Steve

[John A Stuart]

Fancies- outliers within a school that are not the norm. Iron, acid etched pre-industrial times in Japan, are with vinegar do you think? Using wax and leaving for long periods in vinegar to etch a pattern? The technique in Europe was quite advanced, did the tech reach Japan? The French scholar Jehan le Begue wrote a recipe for acid-etching on iron in 1531. He distilled ammonium chloride, ordinary alum and ferrous sulphate in a mixture of water and vinegar. Craftsmen rarely recorded their methods and many developed their own techniques. However, basic principles remain unchanged. Did Japan have vitriol, sulphuric or -ous acids? John

[Steve Waszak]

I'd never heard this word used as a noun this way.  Thanks for that. 

 

I do believe that acids for use in etching in Europe did reach Japan in the second half of the 16th century, yes (good information on Jehan le Begue!).  As the Shodai Hoan is known/thought to have died in 1613, and his employing of the yakite-kusarashi treatment/effect is something he's famous for, we may surmise that he could have been introduced to European acids or acid treatments.  The Japanese could have seen etched European breastplates, for instance, and inquired about how that was done.  Certainly there was an enormous influx of European material and ideas in Momoyama Japan.

Or as you say, perhaps the Japanese had their own methods (vinegar?).  Since there is so little if any information about methods and techniques used by tsubako then, as you note, too, it's hard to do more than speculate at this point...

[jlawson]

Peter here is an example of a re-purposed older tsuba that great care was taken to preserve but also add an artistic element in later years. The original tsuba is a mokume tsuba that was likely pretty plain perhaps with the spider web but likely was just a plain mokume tsuba originally. Signed by Myochin Munesada who was famous for this work. Then many years later the entire tsuba was wrapped in shibuichi to create another side and a great spider demon was carved on it. Signed by Teruaki. It is anyones guess what may have happened to the other side. Was there damage to it or was it just plain and this was a way to "bling" it up. 

 

 

[Peter Bleed]

James,

Thank you for sharing this wonderful tsuba. It seems that this thread has - as they usually do - dissolved across a number of odd topics.

Your tsuba - which really is wonderful - moves in a direction I had not suspected. Basically, I was expecting that doing anything to an "old guard" would be negative. We tend to like "ubu" stuff and in that light the addition of "decoration" might seem wrong.I remain convinced that most of the "embelishments" I see are not very good. That is why I was comfortable using an off hand tone about it. It truly think that "old tsuba" were consistently hustled throughout the Edo and Meiji eras. The great bulk of what we see was never very seriously considered. Japan was - as it is today - awash in mediocre stuff. Our job as collectors is to understand that mass and pick out the stuff that is "really pretty good."

Ford's comments suggest that some "recycling"  can be interesting and even worthy.

And your Teruaki tsuba moves that point even farther ahead. Clearly this treatment respected the original piece and used it as a base for a significant new object. Thank you for showing it to us!

Peter