Dragon in waves Kozuka

[nihonto1001]

Does anyone know the school that this kozuka might be attributed to?

 

 

Thanks,

Jon

[docliss]

Dear Jon, I am sorry to see that you have not yet received a reply to your recent posting, but am sure that this is partly due to the very poor quality of the images that you have posted. Please try again .... John L.

[Ford Hallam]

I wonder if this might be late Edo period Umetada work.

[Brian]

I was thinking that later work like this usually isn't really usually categorized into specific schools?

I think it is only us Westerners that like to fit things into neat little boxes. Unless it is a big mainline school, a lot of the later work doesn't really fit easily into neat schools.

 

Brian

[nihonto1001]

Kind Folks:

 

Thanks for your replies. Sorry about the pictures. Those are high quality for my camera.LOL

 

I will be putting the kozuka on my website, so I wanted to get at least a general description. BTW, I think late edo too, but I am far from an expert on fittings.

 

Jon

[Ford Hallam]

I was thinking that later work like this usually isn't really usually categorized into specific schools?

I think it is only us Westerners that like to fit things into neat little boxes. Unless it is a big mainline school, a lot of the later work doesn't really fit easily into neat schools.

 

Brian

 

You may have a point, Brian, however...

 

If we consider kozuka we find that with a few relatively rare exceptions there are only 2 groups that "get creative" with the standard rectangular format of the kozuka. By which I mean they frequently allow the actual design to dictate the outline of the kozuka, as in this example. The groups I'm referring to are the Higo workers and the Umetada. As this lacks any of the more obvious Higo-esque traits and as it does in fact bare some similarity of later Umetada work I think a case can in fact be made.

 

I also feel the apparent need to categorise things is not more strongly felt in the West compared to Japan. It may well be a relatively recent phenomena in collecting terms but that may also reflect the fact that by describing one's self as a collector you may necessarily need to categorise that which you're accumulating.

 

I wonder what the members here feel about any possible distinction between the two terms; collector and connoisseur.

For me, collectors do just that (collect), they accumulate...and categorise and labels. The connoisseur, on the other hand, seems to me not to need a collection per se. The distinction being that the connoisseur is more concerned with the aesthetic appreciation and is less concerned with labels as such.

 

Perhaps, in the past, it was deemed more refined and cultured to be a connoisseur rather than a collector.

 

Of course, I'm not suggesting collectors can't be connoisseurs also but merely that in the past ( in Japan) much of what many collectors today focus on was not always seen as being that relevant.

 

regards,

ford

[Marc BROQUIN]

Hello all,

I am not sure at all but from general appearance it looks like to be from the GOTO SEIJO school. I have already seen in the past this type of design attributed to this school.

Any comment would be welcome.

Best

Marc