A tsuba school or a tsuba style?

[Dan tsuba]

So, I was thinking again (which maybe isn’t a good thing!).

 

When a tsuba is attributed to a school of tsuba craftsman, my first thought is that all the craftsmen were trained by the same teacher (as in a school-western thought!).

 

But couldn’t several different craftsmen several hundred miles (or thousands of miles) apart make the same style of tsuba without having been taught in that specific school of tsuba makers?

 

In that sense a school would be “a group of artists under a common influence” that definition was found here-

 

https://www.merriam-...om/dictionary/school

 

Especially if there is no mei on a tsuba, most any master tsuba craftsmen could have made the same style of tsuba with an example of that style made in a specific school of tsuba makers.

 

Or am I just overthinking this!

 

 

 

 

[Spartancrest]

Well many artists published their works and it would have been relatively easy to spread the designs throughout Japan from woodblock printed books, the movement of smiths away from the big cities where they were taught and by Samurai craving for the latest style in fashion. I think we are locked in on a certain rigid idea that designs from one school can only be from that school whereas a lot of copying went on - you follow the fashion trend or you go out of business.

 

[Dan tsuba]

Here is a thought about those tsuba books shown in the previous post by Spartancrest.

 

A customer goes to a tsuba craftsman to buy a tsuba.

 

The customer does not see a tsuba that he wants to buy that is on display.

 

So the craftsman shows the customer a catalog of diverse tsuba styles, designs and motifs (that are styles and designs developed by different schools of tsuba craftsman spanning across Japan).

 

The customer flips through the pages of the catalog and finds a tsuba that he likes.

 

He then orders that tsuba, and the craftsman makes it for the customer.

 

I never thought of that before!

 

Made to order tsuba in the Edo period.

 

I think that is a definite possibility!