Seiin - unrecorded signature?

[dir]

Happy New Year to all! I'd appreciate any further information on the attached tsuba which I recently acquired please. I tried to read the signature and using Self and Hirose Japanese Art Signatures came up with sei, shi or kiyo (647) for the first character and possibly tane (823) for the second. However, there seems to be no such artists named Seitane or Shitane and the single Kiyotane given in Haynes (H 03356) has a different character. On the other hand, the third character looks remarkably like the bottom kao given in Haynes for Bairyuken Kiyonaga (H 03291)!

 

I asked Robert Haynes for his opinion and he said the signature read Seiin and was unrecorded. He knew nothing further about him, but he thought it appears he might have been a student of the Goto Seijo School. (I have just found this School was discussed on here in January 2012!)

 

If anyone can provide further light on the signature, that would be very helpful.

 

Thanks and regards

 

David

[Jack Zacao]

The first is 淸 for sure. The second is very close to 胤 which is not unusual in Japanese artist names. So my guess is it is a variation of it, Japanese characters sometimes deviates from the original Chinese origin, some deviate further if it is a signature. I searched it in the following book (it has almost everyone recorded in the field) but found no match. It may not be someone well known.

 

https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:NDL1188487_古今装剣金工一覧_part1.pdf

[Dan tsuba]

So being a new guy about this tsuba stuff, I figured everything was already known.  But I guess there are still things to figure out.  I will continue reading as many posts as I can on this forum so I can learn.