Ono Tsuba

[Iaido dude]

Here are two study pieces. Are they Kanayama, Ono, or Yagyu or later Edo pieces?

 

https://www.jauce.com/auction/h1164546266

 

https://www.jauce.com/auction/g1165325614

[Tsuba gardener]

On 12/26/2024 at 5:59 PM, rkg said:

Curran,

I've always liked that theme EDIT:  Those are very nice pieces.  thanks for sharing!

Here's a few Ohno as per your request, plus a couple that have been called Kanayama, owari, etc as well as Ohno...

 

gear (tokei) theme:

 

sunrise (hi no de) theme:

 

Bamboo (take) theme:

 

Riceball, head bag (kubi tsunagi), etc. theme (I don't know if the board member that purchased this still has it, but if he wants to comment on whether the NB thought this was a Ohno, please do...)

 

This one Is a head scratcher.  I've seen extremely similar (in terms of both theme and workmanship) binned as Ohno, Owari, and Kanayama.  Make of it what you will:

 

 

And finally, this was labeled as being an Ohno by the seller, but the general consensus is that it should be binned as an owari tsuba, so...

 

Best,

rkg

(Richard George)

 

Hi Richard, I have a similar design to the rice ball/ headbang tsuba which l posted a while back. Your design is shown in Haynes catalogue number 19 and described as a Yagua design Robert was shown  my tsuba and described it as ko-Shoami. A member here  stated it could relate to Raijin the thunder God.

[Iaido dude]

Yagyu from page 94 "Owari To Mikawa No Tanko."

 

[Winchester]

Hi Steve Hsu. The first tsuba you posted I'd like to see in person, but it is my opinion that it is Kanayama. I briefly looked at the price and it seems like a good value. While this is speculative, I feel fairly confident...

 

Some of these designs were shared, so in my newbie opinion we need to look to other points that are indicative of the den or known style. For this diagnosis, I am trying to find a sort of kantei or matrix or create one, but haven't had luck nor started yet.

 

 

[Iaido dude]

Thanks, Brian. I agree. The wave and waterwheel motifs hint at Yagyu, but the symmetry is more consistent with Kanayama or Ohno. It is 7.1 mm thick, which is suggestive of Ohno, but I have seen thick Owari and Kanayama. There are two similar and famous Kanayama tsuba in Owari To Mikawa (left) that help to support it's likely Kanayama roots (right), although it still has a unique shape and may still reflect elements of Ohno/Yagyu influence. I just can't fully appreciate tekkotsu without the tsuba in hand; maybe a globular tekkosu at the left bottom between 6 and 7 o'clock. I think that these three are quite rare examples of mokko style Kanayama tsuba.

 

[GRC]

On 12/29/2024 at 12:13 PM, Iaido dude said:

Here are the defining features of Ōno tsuba:

Interestingly enough, as is often the case with ChatGPT summaries, it is so broadly "distilled" as to be virtually unusable.

It sounds good upon first reading, but seriously lacks detail. 

 

You could use that very same set of criteria that it listed for Ohno, to describe almost any of the school constructs that are grouped in with "Owari-Momoyama-ness":

ie. Owari, Kanayama, and Yagyu tsuba (although Yagyu tsuba were later than the rest)...

,but it definitely does not describe Yamakichibei tsuba (where round shapes are the exception rather than the more typical mokko or lobed shapes, and irregular asymmetry in the sukashi pattern and execution is nearly always the norm). 

 

Note: I have tried ChatGPT many times in the past, and even made some past NMB posts using its results, only to discover multiple flaws and limitations of using ChatGPT )

 

Oh and, Happy new year by the way 

[Iaido dude]

Glen, I'm not ready to abandon the use of this tool for helping to define modern categorical distinctions between tsuba. AI produces what is, by its very intent, a synthesis of available data. It does not interpret, which is where we need to go next to discern what features might differentiate the categories that exhibit "Owari-Momoyama-ness."  For example, the Ono guards are "more commonly" thick. Owari guards are sometimes as thick (>7 mm), but those are rare. I have to do a survey of that defining range and compare to other categories, but the point is that we need to do the rest of the leg work. There is never going to be an airtight set of attributes that we can point to and say, oh it's this, but I still think this approach can be helpful.

What the ChatGPT synthesis (and it's likely also true for searches for Owari, Kanayama and Yagyu) does do quite well is to eliminates a lot of tsuba that have been attributed to Ono by individual collectors and/or NTBHK and which clearly do not exhibit this "Owari-Momoyama-ness," whether Ono or other Owari Province category. The results of the search does not apply to Yamakichibei, Hoan, Norisuke, Nobuie, or other Owari smiths. Here is another opportunity to subdivide, ie the Owari/Kanayama/Ono/Yagyu are a sub-group with related features, which is not a new concept and can be expected because of the close provincial geography of these workshops. 

 

I'll play around a bit more including a comparison with the Google AI profile, which has the added advantage of providing at least some of the key sources for the synthesis. I think that it may be possible to set up a table with attributes as the columns and tsuba categories (e.g. Owari, Kanayama, etc.) as the rows, and put check marks in the squares to see if a "bar code" comes out that is distinguishing. Some of the attributes may be shared. Others may actually be unique. And more aesthetic attributes should be included, although “stiff” versus “lively, fluid” needs to be better defined. Science and Art are not mutually exclusive, as I have written on and published before.