What is this then?

[reinhard]

This may be a little help for understanding and comparison. This tsuba's design origins from the "kuruma ni tohroh"-legend. It is based on a Chinese story of a mantis preparing to attack a cartwheel. It may have been chosen to illustrate the brave attitude of the insect or it may suggest, that it is prudent to avoid meaningless conflicts. - What a great metaphor for what is going on here right now! - Apart from technical questions, this is also a matter of design. I would like to show you, what third master TADATORA made of this challenge and why Shan's tsuba looks like a parody.

 

reinhard

[Kevin Adams]

Thank you for posting that picture, Reinhard - it is very helpful to me in keeping the design portion of this discussion in perspective

[Martin]

Hi all,

 

it might be helpful to see both pieces in direct comparison.

The execution of the Mantis on Shans Tsuba is quite clumsy. It is hard to make out its head (compared to the Tadatora example) and the feet are also weakly designed. A Mantis in a most abstract form so to speak :D

 

Nonetheless (having only the pictures to judge) I think it is not a modern copy.

The shifting of the Hitsu-Ana is quite commonly seen in Akasaka works and does IMHO not indicate a poor attempt to imitate Akasaka school work.

Not least the broadness of the Seppa-Dai and the insinuated semicircular areas at the top and bottom of the Nakago-Ana (prepared to fit the Tsuba to the blade with Sekigane / Kuchi-Beni) makes me guess this is late Akasaka (or Akasaka style) work.

 

Ford, I would be interested in how you can differentiate between iron and steel from the pictures.

And maybe another silly question : Is there maybe a connection between material (Steel or iron) and certain Tsuba schools?

 

Best,

[Rich T]

yeah, that's why I said in my last post, it might be a Shoami copy.

 

Rich

[shan]

Guys,

Thanks for the comparison.

This is a road i have already travelled with Mike Yamasaki and Cyrus Chan.

I have and so have they said it is not a masterworks by any stretch.

It is pointless comparing mine to the 3rd master and probably one of The best smiths that ever came out of that school and one of his masterworks at that.Thats a beautiful Tsuba Martin,withiut doubt.If i had that i would be happy indeed.

But...You may as well compare every blade asked about on this forum , to a Heian Nagamitsu,because it compares badly declare as modern or exceptionally poor quality.

It is an established "assumption" that it is not by him or any of the Great ones in any way shape or form and not by any of the masters as early as that.It was the timeline that i was trying to establish.

As a way of determining if an item is by a master or specific artist ,this method works well,but pointless when the item in question is so far from anything done by any of them.

I have already said it is a very poor works and most agree to this ...unless this was by design.

I have never and nor have any others thought this a great Tsuba.But they did think it an genuine piece and from around th 4th 5th or 6th gen

It is poorly executed and is nothing like the example (or indeed the ones given me by all the experts)but as the school moved with the times the designs became more abstract at times.

What i am at this point trying to establish is why at least 2 people thought it a modern Item made for Ebay sales.(which is not where i got it from sadly )

Beautiful Tsuba though martin.

there are others by this smith that are not as good as this and are more abstract as with all others.It depends on what they were trying to achieve.

shan

[Martin]

Shan,

 

I did not want to imply, that your Tsuba could be a 3rd Master piece by just showing them next to each other

I think it is just helpful to compare the workmanship and design of a Ko-Akasaka Master to that of your piece.

 

And why do you always insist that this is such an exceptionally poor quality piece?

Try to enjoy it as it is... (and if that´s not possible - sell it !).

 

Cheers,

[Ford Hallam]

Hi Martin,

 

I haven't tried to distinguish between steel and iron. I think we've covered that one, it's all steel of varying carbon content. ( and other trace elements)

 

But to address what I think you may be getting at; firstly, as I pointed out way back, I think that trying to use the actual shape ( this would include the cut out design as well as overall physical appearance) of this bit of steel to define it's origin is a poor start. Shapes can be easily copied, even if very poorly, as in this case. That being said how can we then rely at all on that aspect of the tsuba in question to try to asses it's age and the rest? The fact is we can't...

 

What we are left with is the appearance of the material itself. We know, and are reasonably agreed that it exhibits practically no defining characteristics at all. The fine graininess seen on the rim ( seen in a magnified image ) is in my experience achieved on mild steel in about a week. If you polish a rounded bit of mild steel and subject it to a bit of damp, perhaps with some salt thrown in for good measure ( I'll refrain from supplying details of my processes ) and give it a bit of a rub at the end of the day with some very fine steel wool this is precisely the sort of effect you get. It's simply the start of the breakdown of the surface steel. If this steel was hand made in any manner it would be unlikely to be anywhere as uniform or homogeneous as modern steel. This is why when we examine even relatively late steel from the Edo period that has been made by traditional methods you can always find some hints, however subtle, of these variations of the surface composition of the steel.

 

The area inside the nakago ana which I maintain is evidence of casting has been interpreted by some to suggest the classic 3 plate Akasaka construction. The first problem with this idea is that the plate is made first and then nakago ana would e cut out...leaving a relatively smooth inner wall. It may be suggested that corrosion has caused the softer inner core to corrode away leaving these cavities but that seems unlikely as the rest of the guard shows no such corrosion. My view would be that it was cast this way.

 

Shan can't believe that anyone would go to the trouble to file up the design to hide evidence of casting but leave the nakago ana like this. The fact is you can see some similar pitting in at least one of the images of the sukashi...and if the maker of this piece were to completely file away the casting marks inside the nakago ana he'd be left with a very awkward shape indeed.

 

The copper sekigane is also, in my opinion, brand new. Pete has suggested that it's appearance may be due to over enthusiastic cleaning, perhaps involving an acid. When you use acid on steel and copper combined it generally results in a sort of electrochemical reaction that causes the copper to be flash plated on the steel. This is a well known phenomena and is easily recognised, however mild. Again this is only my view, based on nearly 30 years of daily work with these sorts of materials , but that copper looks as though it's never had a patina. In a similar, but somewhat more subtle, way to the breakdown of the steel surface by the action of corrosion ( rusting, patination etc ) copper (and all non ferrous alloys) that have any sort of genuine age reveal the passage of time in the appearance of the outer skin. In the case of the seki-gane, while they may have been over cleaned and thus the tell tale surface I miss been destroyed, but I find this unlikely because of the "hardness" of all of the copper faces...it would be practically impossible to re-polish every surface to such a clean state if these bits of copper had been anything over a few 10's of years old. Similarly I see no compelling signs that this tsuba was ever mounted. The bright steel on the seppa-dai area is not evidence either. How does a copper seppa wear steel like that? It doesn't...and I haven't seen steel seppa yet

 

When I look at a tsuba like this my range of possibilities covers the whole span of tsuba production from beginning to now. I have no artificial cut off point at the end of the Edo period that I feel I need to try and squeeze everything questionable in before. To do so without firm evidence simply lowers the perceived standard of the work of the Edo period tsuba-ko.

 

The suggestion, to explain the terrible workmanship, that this was probably made by a genuine smith before he became skilled would be funny if it wasn't so improbable. Any apprentice who produced work like this, in that period in any reputable studio, would have found himself in the street begging...if not in the sword testing grounds for wasting expensive materials and lowering the "all important" reputation of the shop.

 

It also reveals a total lack of appreciation of the way artisans were trained and is more likely informed by modern conceptions of shoddy manufacturing practices and cost cutting. I have complete amateurs with no direct, face to face instruction, on my own forum who regularly produce work far superior to this.... You have to ask yourself how someone so inept got himself set up as a tsuba-ko....and how he might have survived producing work like this.

 

Pieces like this, being attributed to Edo period workers, simply serve to tarnish the reputation of genuine work and I for one would like to see a much harder line being taken with such "questionable" pieces rather than what I see as unjustifiable accommodation of bits of metal with absolutely no redeeming features. Chuck them in a tatara I say ...rant over ...and now I've admitted it Shan, I don't like this piece and nothing worth appreciating about it in my (refined) opinion

[shan]

Hi Martin,

Thanks for your responses and I think you misunderstood my comments (always hard with the written word)

"I did not want to imply, that your Tsuba could be a 3rd Master piece"

I was not suggesting you were.

I was just saying that placing it next to such a fantastic piece only heightens the fact that it is a poor work by comparison.(if it were me i would say Poor copy or fake straight away)

Don’t get me wrong Mine, its Nice enough...Just nothing i would have "written home about".

I have been made well aware by any number of experts and novices alike that it is not a great piece and barely worthy of much (if any) consideration or discussion.

The story was as i said at first...

I saw something similar and approached the owner of this and they said theres was Akasaka and probably Tadatoki maybe 5th-6th gen.

I thought i had best research mine (although it was IMHO not as nice as the other) to be sure.

I contacted several Big Names and they in turn suggested Bigger names and so on and so on ...and the "general" consensus was that it was most likely Akasaka and could be (opinions differ here) anything from 4th gen to 6th gen+.Not a masterpiece but nice enough.

Worse case it was probably possibly maybe perhaps definatly going to get "Akasaka School" at shinsa.

Then i contacted another specialist site of Mike Yamasaki and Cyrus Chan, (Mike did say possibly rejected if the panel were in a bad mood due to patination)

They did not like the colour and thought it a Later "school" piece that may have been partly or completely repatinated. They showed as you have examples from masterpieces which told me what I already knew and that was that it is No masterpiece.(I have also googled Akasaka)

This along with Fords dislike and suggestion of young age, made me cease in any trades and ask the forum what they felt.

None of these specialists or experts had until this forum (and ford) Even suggested that it was a modern item. (I cannot tell you if they thought this though) so it has gone from Definatly akasaka and will shinsa to the school at least IMHO...to .....Made last year to sell on Ebay.

...............

this is one giant leap from defiantly sending it to shinsa and it being a "safe bet" ...to "don`t wast your money its a Mug/cup coaster".

I am just trying now to find out how it can elicit so many near identical opinions from different sources to such widely varying opinions from others.

I have asked you all…and it is these opinions that will help me and perhaps everyone to understand the fundamental issues that make an item “right” or Just plain “wrong”.

It’s the subtle things I believe that can differentiate a great works from a masterpiece,But this subtlety can also help in other ways…

 

Please do keep spitballing and brainstorming guys its all useful stuff.

[Ford Hallam]

Finding the occasional straw of truth awash in a great ocean of confusion and bamboozle requires intelligence, vigilance, dedication and courage. But if we don't practice these tough habits of thought, we cannot hope to solve the truly serious problems that face us - and we risk becoming a nation of suckers, up for grabs by the next charlatan who comes along. ~Carl Sagan, The Fine Art of Baloney Detection

 

If everyone is thinking alike then somebody isn't thinking. ~George S. Patton

 

and this one quite apropos;

 

I had an immense advantage over many others dealing with the problem inasmuch as I had no fixed ideas derived from long-established practice to control and bias my mind, and did not suffer from the general belief that whatever is, is right. ~Henry Bessemer (discovered new method of producing steel)

 

[shan]

For Reinhard,because If we must compare a master to a possible student... then here is another masterworks but the same smith.Tadatora or maybe Tadamune.Different design but sukashi cut in a similar way.Perhaps this design could have been refined more?

Please note,I am not trying to compare my Tsuba to a Master,Just showing that anyone can produce a masterpiece and call all else garbage.

Yet there will be average pieces by the same hand.

 

 

(Image was found on the internet and used as an example only.)

 

regards

shan

[Markus]

Perhaps this design could have been refined more?

 

Are you referring to the one on the right? The design needs no more refining. It is

a dynamic representation of the Musashino motif as its best, interpreted according to

the aesthetical principles of iki as expected from the Akasaka school.

 

BTW: I have an identical piece in my collection

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iki_(aesthetic_ideal)

[reinhard]

Shan, this newly presented tsuba looks like one of the better works of fourth master TADAMUNE (a similar example can be seen on p.273 of Sasano sensei's book, BTW). I'm not quite sure though, what this is supposed to illustrate. Their design and workmanship are completely different. The new example seems to be well balanced in shape and design and traditionally made (although difficult to tell from a tiny picture alone).

 

Just one more thing for the newbies out there: Judging an iron sukashi tsuba is trickier than it seems. Aesthetics, proportions and design are important as well as technical aspects: surface, including tsuchime, tekkotsu, color and condition of patina and some other aspects have to be considered carefully and should be seen in hands. Some fine tsuba have been deteriorated by careless handling and/or storage, but solid art can stand bad treatment to some extent. A shade of their former beauty, they remain still classy, but the tsuba in question has no quality whatsoever. Neither from a design point of view nor from workmanship's. What should be kept in mind is: Genuine iron tsuba were made by CHISELLING sukashi out of a carefully forged plate. At least some traces of the process and of the basic material should be still visible somewhere. During later Edo period sukashi tsuba were filed, polished and patinated afterwards in sophisticated ways, but if they look like uninspired, chemically treated fretwork, they are almost certainly modern copies.

 

The attachement may help illustrating what I'm talking about. It is a close-up of the early Akasaka tsuba from the Compton collection. Everything about this tsuba is just perfect. Workmanship, steel texture, patina and colour, chisel-marks, color of the seki-gane and so forth. It may give you a reference point.

 

It might be better to let this thread fade, for so many objections have been repeated several times by now, but this is up to the mods, of course. Shan reloaded, as we know him.

 

reinhard

[Keith Larman]

*** Never date a girl with big hands.

 

Hence me marrying a 5'1" woman with small hands... At least I measure up as average now...

[Keith Larman]

Just fwiw...

 

You cannot underestimate the importance of the functional aspect of these things. The thing that jumped out at me was the overall placement of the ana and the shape of the seppa dai. That tsuba would look odd at best mounted on a sword simply due to what *looks like* an offset and imbalance in the design. I think Ford's comment about copy of a copy is relevant -- to me it looks like someone copied a copy but didn't place the ana correctly. So either this was fit to a seriously oddly shaped nakago (virtually no mune machi and a deep hamachi which makes even less sense) or the person making it didn't understand the basic balance required to make a tsuba look correct on a sword (which strikes me as highly unlikely if it is authentic). It looks like a combining of a number of small distortions in shape that get magnified into a piece that is just, well, "off" for lack of a better word.

 

Certainly an oddball piece IMO. Authenticity is beyond my skills. But on the purely "how would that get on a sword" aspect I find it odd.

 

Just my single cent contribution...

[Keith Larman]

Okay, nix that. Got photoshop out as a voice in my head kept saying "maybe it's just an optical illusion". So I took the image above with two tsuba side by side, traced the known piece and overlaid it. Still a bit off but not how I thought.

 

 

 

 

 

Interesting... I don't know now... Still looks odd to me and as a first impression, well, odd is the best answer for me. Shrug. I'll leave it to you guys who know more.

[Rich T]

ok, well here's some ointment in ya eye LOL

 

http://www.freewebs.com/kamakiriken/tsubaupload.htm (scroll down to item 12)

 

Not sure how they compare, but I suspect this is what I remembered when I made my call. However, I STILL think it (both of them) might be Shoami.

 

Rich

[Ford Hallam]

Morning Rich ( well...it is here )

 

good link there. That's very clearly a clearer version of the "questionable" one. I thought this line was interesting though;

There is even a few reproductions out there, but you can tell that the iron is much poorer and not antique.

 

hey....we may have found one

[Martin]

What should be kept in mind is: Genuine iron tsuba were made by CHISELLING sukashi out of a carefully forged plate. At least some traces of the process and of the basic material should be still visible somewhere. During later Edo period sukashi tsuba were filed, polished and patinated afterwards in sophisticated ways, but if they look like uninspired, chemically treated fretwork, they are almost certainly modern copies.

 

Hi Reinhard,

 

I agree with nearly all of your statements, but for what I know, cutting out Sukashi only by a Chisel was done mainly on really early thinner plate pieces (for instance Ko-Tosho Tsuba, that had Ko-Sukashi elements). The Sukashi walls there show dull/blunt edges.

If you consider the Ji-Sukashi Tsuba from the Compton collection you posted, I can hardly imagine that the walls were just hammered out. Imagine the thickness of some early Akasaka pieces of 7mm and the amount of open work (air) in some pieces. Hammering out the Sukashi to its final stage would definitely be a hard task and would not leave those sharp edges (Kittate) Akasaka school work is known for. I therefore think, that filing was a subsequent, refining process after chiseling out the rough Sukashi design.

And why shouldn´t this process has begun earlier than the "later Edo" period?

I have seen early iron Higo pieces (finished in Migaki-Ji = polished surface), that were perfectly preserved and looked as if they were made "yesterday" (the other way around - modern copies of Kanayama Tsuba, that looked really old on first sight, is possible too).

The Kantei of (well preserved) Tsuba can therefore rather be challenging

 

My writings may have gone a little off topic (away from discussing Shans Tsuba) but I would nevertheless be interested in the thoughts of others on the process of creating Sukashi.

 

Best,

[Michael 101]

Well done Rich,

 

Now all we need is one of our more computor literate members to load these two pictures side by side instead of using (my) Musashino tsuba to compare. Although we may need to check with Mantis man.

 

I (rubbish at computors) have printed both off and the comparison is very striking.

 

I agree with the Mantis website attribution to Akasaka and would have thought that it may even be 4th generation by the sloping of the walls to the nakago ana. Nice work.

 

Comparison of the two shows:-

 

1) Obvoius heavy and offbalance to the kozuka ana (mentioned by all)

2) Course cut sukashi - compare the base of the mantis( heart shape and nice length of curls on the Mantis Dude version) , and its lumpy middle of three three legs against the mimi. Also uneven width of the sukashi eg its antenai. The whole cut below the kozuka ana is very crude in comparison to Mantis dude school master version.

 

However - I do not think from the pictures that Chan's is modern made, although without seeing in the flesh couldnt be 100% certain as could any of us - unless we made it (I know Fords would be much better made - as I have some of his, LoL)

 

My feeling on this "Akasaka style tsuba" is that it is a country copy, I will explain.

 

Akasaka tsuba were incredibly popular in the late Edo period especially at the time when large numbers of samurai came from all provinces to Edo, many of whom would have bought Akasaka tsuba probably as momentos to their visit and on return home these tsuba would have been admired and copied by local craftsman - my own opinion is that this is one such example. Crude yes, modern I dont think so.

 

Great link - really enjoying the debate, mostly very healthy stuff.

 

Best regards to all.

Michael

[Rich T]

Hello (morning, afternoon (here) evening) all. Ok, well I am sure Ken won't mind, here is Mike's wish. I was going to make an animated gif, but someone put a bottle of red on my desk and that ended that idea LOL.

 

One last thought, Mike noted

 

Akasaka tsuba were incredibly popular in the late Edo period especially at the time when large numbers of samurai came from all provinces to Edo, many of whom would have bought Akasaka tsuba probably as momentos to their visit and on return home these tsuba would have been admired and copied by local craftsman

 

This group, besides the very best of the mainline took a serious nose dive at the end off their reign, and in fact, I think the first Tosa Myochin Muneyoshi (I might be wrong there, flying by the seat of my pants) who was the top student of the 9th Akasaka master was considered a much better artist. Higo took over as the bee's knee's of this style of work and a lot of the late Akasaka stuff is fairly poor quality.

 

Happy days

 

cheers

 

Rich

[Mantis dude]

Ken doesn't mind! I learned a lesson or reminded myself that I need to pay attention more and not make a quick assessment. My neck has been out and I haven't been on the computer a lot. When I saw Shan's piece, I gave it a quick glance and wanted it. But I failed to look at it like I should of. I did compare it to the very similar modern piece that is out on yahoo.jp everyday and there was some difference in shape. I rushed to judgment without really looking.... a very dangerous way to proceed. Because my neck was in spasm, I was skipping steps and we all know what happens when you do that....you get buyer's remorse. The more I went down the path of discussion though, the more I started waking up. My subconscious was started to send up red flags on the piece before my mind caught up. I found myself at night thinking something isn't right. I read some feedback of the piece and then really compared it to my piece. I started thinking that the execution of this tsuba was inferior to mine and that with some other opinions really changed my desire for the item. I think the execution really didn't flow. When I looked at some of my other pieces which I would assume are later like tsuba 42 http://i25.photobucket.com/albums/c52/k ... ntis42.jpg it still felt wrong. even when I looked at a piece where I think it is very crude tsuba 39 http://i25.photobucket.com/albums/c52/k ... ntis39.jpg the design still felt off.

 

One of the things I like about my piece and other supposed quality tsuba in my collection is that the steel/iron has a particular feel to it that inferior tsuba don't have. I make no claim that I have the expertise to assign or properly kantei a piece, but this thread really does highlight the need to "go hands on" with a piece. Pictures can lie too easily or distort. I don't discount being able to use the internet or a forum like this but on a questionable piece, you really need to be hands on.

 

There are a lot of issues raised in this thread and it becomes a great learning tool. Talk of casting becomes interesting... if you look at my tsuba 2 and 16. http://i25.photobucket.com/albums/c52/k ... antis2.jpg http://i25.photobucket.com/albums/c52/k ... ntis16.jpg These tsuba became a valuable learning tool for me on casting. One of the things learned was that cast tsuba are filed down but they miss spots. When comparing the 2 you can see how they finished them a bit differently. The first piece fooled a bunch and even in hand it wasn't immediately apparent. When you have the 2 in hand, you start to notice and once again that feel is missing from these pieces. I am curious about the age of these, I do wonder if they are older castings or are they late edo +. I did find the first one mounted on a wakizashi that looked like it had been together for a while but that can be fooled or even 50 years together I assume can give that feeling.

 

All in all this so far has been a review of my collecting career and a big reminder, a quick glance is not acceptable. Make sure you take that 2nd, 3rd, 4th etc look! Many times I have done that, it seems the better pieces stand out and the poorer ones step down. I do get a gut feeling on some pieces that I may not be able to articulate like some of the more experienced collectors can do and that gut feeling isn't always wrong. It does amaze me that that little voice in the head can recognize things before I am really conscious of it.

 

Anyway, I am starting to babble, Good learning thread and well you can't beat the subject matter! ok I am a bit biased. Thanks for everyone's input so far.

[Mantis dude]

I know this pic isn't great but I consider this shelf to be my akasaka style row. Would really love to have a person of knowledge come and evaluate all my pieces and compare and contrast. I have a feeling it would be a great learning opportunity to compare and contrast all my pieces and styles. Some in the photo haven't been posted yet to the site, I need to add a bunch in many categories. I have another sukashi shelf but that is more choshu/bushu and shoami.

[reinhard]

but for what I know, cutting out Sukashi only by a Chisel was done mainly on really early thinner plate pieces

 

Martin, what I'm saying is: At the beginning of every sukashi process is chiselling. Even if these marks are effaced during later processes like filing/polishing and so forth, some traces are usually still visible somewhere.

 

reinhard

[reinhard]

Off topic and just for (Ken's) fun: This (very huge) mantis was sitting on a handrail outside the shrine's museum of Tsurugaoka Hachiman Gu in Kamakura last year. Unimpressed by curious visitiors, it displayed a cool air; reminding me of a warrior, focussing on his opponent. I understood, all of a sudden, why samurai felt attracted to this fascinating insect.

 

reinhard

[Martin]

Great picture Reinhard !

[nagamaki - Franco]

Off topic I understood, all of a sudden, why samurai felt attracted to this fascinating insect.

 

reinhard

 

Hmm, wonder if samurai opinion might have been different had they known the female mantis decapitates the male following sex

[reinhard]

Hmm, wonder if samurai opinion might have been different had they known the female mantis decapitates the male following sex

 

Samurai surely knew, but didn't care. Mr.Berlusconi, on the other hand, didn't know and cares a lot by now. This ambiguity makes us an enigma to the female sex.

 

reinhard

[Mantis dude]

MANTID Rule!!!!!!

 

 

But they may make ugly fittings- so send them to me :D

[Jacques]

Hi,

 

Mantis were respected in Japan as they are predators and protected ricefield from pest insects. You will often find their image engraved on dotaku 銅鐸

 

BTW Mantis cannibalism is not systematic :D

[Mantis dude]

Self promotion but on my website has everyone read my mantis symbolism article? Just some research behind the theme if anyone is interested.

http://www.freewebs.com/kamakiriken/symbolupload.htm Always welcome comments or something to add (or subtract). Thanks.

 

But once again, Mantis are only cool for me... so send me your tired, your lonely mantis koshorie..... Maybe I will apply for charity status as a home for wayward mantid. ok I am sure you are all sick of the mantis solicitation. lol. I promise an update soon of some interesting pieces all around.

 

Enjoy the Spring! (mantis are autumn insects)