HERMANN HISTORICA AND TEPPO

[Bazza]

Friends,

 

Uwe started a thread on the tsuba in this auction and going through them I gasped at the guns on offer further in.  Start here:

 

https://www.hermann-historica.de/upload/80/A80-AW/154/

 

I would love to keep up with this auction and see what the guns brought.

 

BaZZa.

[Bugyotsuji]

Quite a variety there! 

[Fuuten]

I thought this nanban creation was quite neat. Not my thing but I never saw anything like it either.

 Apologies for offtopic, from a page other than the homepage - I thought this was the original topic.

 

To OP; nice item. Would like a full English version:)

[Viper6924]

”Clear-lacquered full stock of Tosa type”...

There is absolutely nothing Tosa over that matchlock. And the ”full” stock is more likely 20th century.

I love these auction descriptions

 

Jan

[Bugyotsuji]

Jan, notice another stock described as Bizen! 

[Viper6924]

and one described as Awa...

 

I guess the person writing these descriptions must have read a book that we both missed :)

 

Jan

[Bugyotsuji]

There's some good material in there, but where to start?

[Viper6924]

I took 10 minutes and went through the lots. On the plus side I like that they put some effort into the presentation. And they managed to put together an ”eclectic” collection of matchlocks, most of them late Edo period.

On the other side, a lot of what is written is quite frankly rubbish. And just giving the objects a cursory glance, reveals a lot of ”alterations” especially to the stocks.

The prices? As per usual, over the top.

 

Jan

[IanB]

Jan,  I fully agree with you, but you must remember that there is very little information in the English, or indeed other European, language, available that details gun types. Perhaps more interesting are the small-swords with their 'shakudo' hilts. These fall into the class of material called sawasa which includes tobacco boxes, pipe cases an other objects. One item bears an ancient label describing t=it as having been obtained in Nagasaki and hence they are all assumed to be Japanese. Even a glance at the items illustrated in the book issued by the Rijksmuseum shows that they are in fact Chinese - probably made in the Chinese conclave there.

Ian Bottomley

[Peter Bleed]

I tried to direct the other NMB thread on the Hermann Historica auction to both of the "Namban" pieces that Ian mentioned. In the past I have tried to use the chronology of European swords to date lots of so-called Nanban tsubas. Those compariosn suggest to me that the Namban style has to be later than most of the books suggests. Whatever the dating, they certainly show that there was flow of ideas about sword fittings across the Indian Ocean. It is also usual now to suggest that lots of the nanban and sawasa stuff was made "in China." Maybe it was, but I'd like to see some evidence of that. What seems to survive is either in Japan or Europe/

And the estimates on the Hermann sales are - well - pretty steep IMHO

[IanB]

Peter,  One real give-away about sawasa is that the Japanese used shakudo as a base for decoration in gold whereas sawasa is the opposite with the shakudo used for the ornamentation on a gilt ground. Even more unusual is that the shakudo is generally black lacquered as well. Among the dozens of items in the Rijksmuseum publication are boxes with 'Japanese figures' as decoration that are distinctly NOT how the Japanese would depict themselves. Many of the others have rather poor depictions of pagodas, willow threes and other devices that appear to be cut out of sheet metal and fastened rather haphazardly on the gilt surface. We know that the Dutch were confined to Dejima in 1641 and that there was already a Chinese enclave in Nagasaki who were allowed to trade there. Whether the Chinese produced these items within the enclave, or ordered them from the Chinese mainland for sale to the Dutch I do not know. It seems that only the hilts and mounts of hangers and small swords were made there to be fitted to blades with typical German etching of the type done in Solingen elsewhere. This is consistent with the Japanese practice of searching the Dutch ships arriving at Dejima and confiscating all the weapons, returning them when they sailed away. The swords in the Rijksmuseum catalogue are dated as being from the last quarter of the 17th century to the second half of the 18th century.