O-Suriage blade w/hi in gunto mounts, advice please.

[Tcat]

Some hada.

[nagamaki - Franco]

Hello Alex,

 

thank you for posting this additional information. The measurements are consistent with a Koto sword, no surprises. This is certainly an interesting sword with a strong Soshu flavor (lots to study and appreciate), enjoy! If it does go to shinsa and/or polish at some point in time I would very much like to see/hear about the results.

[Ted Tenold]

Hi Alex,

 

I wasn’t ignoring your questions. I wanted to address them in greater detail and I needed to set aside some time.

 

Ted, this is very interesting....what might the "(or more)" be?

 

Alterations can include moving up the notches (machiokuri), shortening the blade from the nakago end either modestly or greatly, removal of mei, installation of horimono, or even corrections from the tip end such as on Naginata and Nagamaki where the tip curvature is removed to promote remounting for use as a bukezukuri mounting. In its history, a sword may have undergone one or more of these processes, some of which will eliminate evidence of another such as a machiokuri on a sword which is later shortened. My point on your sword was that it may be possible the hi were installed prior to the shortening of the sword.

 

Is there a chance that this sword could indeed have been made by one of these smiths or is this pretty unlikey?

 

Determining the maker with any confident accuracy from images is, again, quite difficult to impossible. Swords are a three dimensional study while monitors provide a compromised two dimensional representation. It’s possible that a maker that worked in that style of hi made the subject sword, but don’t take those examples as suggestions of this swords origins.

 

Ted, being a craftsman perhaps you can shed light onto the reason atobori hi stop at the yokote and are not cut further into the kissaki? I was always under the impression that hi are always carved after a sword is completed - Does the hi carving occur before heat treatment if the hi are original?

 

The practice of ending the hi with a margin between them and the koshinogi is to provide a buffer zone (if you will) of area that the tip can be pulled back if necessary without intruding upon carvings closer to the koshinogi, in which case would compromise the shape, structural integrity, and niku of the kissaki. It also puts a bit more weight and strength into a critical, yet delicate region of the sword. Some smiths practiced this as a part of their working maxim, but when looking at older Koto pieces, I generally suspect atobori on hi that end further back unless the maker (or the condition of the hi) precludes that. In swords with shoshin mei (genuine signatures) it’s a bit easier to conclude whether they are ubu or ato. In mumei pieces, identifying the maker can be a process of either including the features and health of the hi as part of the analysis, or separating them from the other features (hada, hamon, shape) of the sword, to determine the maker. If the hi demonstrate certain elements of installation, then one might be able to accurately conclude that they are ubu to the maker. A particular maker may have hi that are very wide and deeply cut for the blade, and/or ends of a particular style, with ends cut in a particular way. These are all clues to analysis. But if they seem to not fit in some way, or stand in opposition to the other characteristics of the sword, then one might have to suspect they were added later.

 

All that said, after looking at your latest images I would add more points for consideration.

 

I see that the hisaki (ends of the hi) look more like nagashi than sagaru (terminating a distance back away from the koshinogi) with the end cut to mimic the shape of the koshinogi. Nagashi is "tapering or washing away" to an equal point rather than the conventional end with the rising cut reflecting the koshinogi shape. The hi are centrally set in the shinogiji so that a thin road boarders either side of the hi. This is ryochiri style. Over time, as swords are polished, there can be geometric changes manifested through the removal of material. Horimono can be one of the most evident visual victims of depletion. Hi become thinner and shallower as the adjacent surface material diminishes thus changing their shape. Their ends begin to soften and loose their original shape as well to the degree that original ends can eventually become nagashi. They can even begin to loose their uniformity of width and the edges begin to meander along their length so they look crooked or squirrely. Smaller hi such as soe-bi can disappear in places and re-emerge along the length of a sword. Hi cut later in the blades history can obviously demonstrate a newer, healthier appearance against the overall sugata of the sword. Polishers must make serious considerations to how much and how far to polish hi and horimono of any kind if they are suspected to be original, because if they are, they should reflect the maker’s intended shape, the period and age of the blade, *and* balanced symmetrical condition to the sword itself.

 

Taking the above into consideration, I notated your image of the munesaki. Looking at this image, one can see that there is a disparity in the termination points of the koshinogi at the mune between omote to ura and an imbalance in the width of the mune surfaces. This disporportion of shape from side to side can affect the depth and shape of the hi from side to side presently, and in the future. In radical examples, this also elevates the potential of shingane surfacing on the thinner side of the blade in the ji and/or shinogiji as one side of the kawagane (and the niku) may have been reduced more than the other. Restoration is many times about decisions of compromise to promote the greater good. Maximizing preservation while minimizing depletion is the primary consideration. The appearance of this imbalance could be a matter of your camera angle, but this can be seen on swords and thus am using what you’ve posted as the example. Seeing something like this compels us to look at all the features of shape and consider if they are original or alterations, and in either case if they are “as intended”, conditionally compromised, or just plain poorly executed.

 

 

 

I would say that the new images sway me to think the hi may indeed be original and showing signs of depletion, but without having the sword in hand, we're all just speculating here.

 

*edited for minor spelling errors and clarity*