Vines sukashi tsuba

[pcfarrar]

A few weeks ago I picked up the tsuba below from a board member. I wondered if anyone had any thoughts on the school? It is katana size and I'm guessing late edo.

 

I particularly like worn look to the gold nunome-zogan and I assume this is how the piece was originally made?

 

Measurements: 7.8 x 7.6 x 0.4cm

 

Thanks,

 

Peter

[Lee Bray]

Is that not a mercury gilding application of gold?

Nunome zogan would be a tricky process to do on the irregular areas shown here.

 

Any cross hatching/very fine lines behind the gold?

 

School - Higo? Based purely on the vines and nothing else.

[cspage]

Higo Nishigaki? Tsuba Kansho-ki, page 152. Similarities exist.

 

Colin

[pcfarrar]

Is that not a mercury gilding application of gold?

 

Sorry made a mistake you are right that it is gilded. Cross hatching is quite clear.

 

I don't have Tsuba Kansho-ki to compare would appreciate a photo of that page if anyone has the time.

[Marc BROQUIN]

Hello Peter,

I saw recently a CHOSHU NAKAI tsuba with a similar design and construction. Perhaps a track ?

Friendly

Marc

[Marc BROQUIN]

Hello all,

 

I would like to add a little comment about gilding.

 

For me a gilded metal is one on which gold has been deposited by traditionnal mercury alloy process or electolysis.

 

Do you consider nunome zogan equal as guilding ?

 

Because if one can see traces of the file, it is surely nunomezogan : gold leaf applied by smooth hammering on a striated surface.

 

Comments welcome.

 

Friendly,

 

Marc

[docliss]

Dear Marc

 

By my understanding, gilding is 'the covering or overlay with gold or with any goldlike substance'. Thus all of the various methods utilised by the Japanese to achieve this end, including nunome-zogan, are included under this descriptive term. Whether or not this also includes inlay I am not sure ... probably not.

 

Kind regards, John L.

[Lee Bray]

If my post has caused any confusion, allow me to clarify.

 

I asked about the cross hatch/fine lines as, to me, their presence would indicate nunome-zogan.

If there are no cross hatchings then, I believe, it is mercury gilded which is brushed on and requires no cross hatching.

 

*Edit to further clarify... *

As Peter said it has lines evident, I presume it is nunome-zogan.

[Mantis dude]

This is a general comment, I remember the first time I looked under a loop at a set of menuki with gold covering. It was amazing at what you could see with magnification that your regular eye misses. I was looking at what turned out to be an old monoyama set of menuki with gold inlay(really overlay), applied in a similar style to the above at least on looks. When looking through the loop, I was able to see that the gold edges in lots of areas was actually crinkled up- think of tearing tinfoil and seeing the edges of the foil get smooshed in. The gold was overlayed by uttori method. so when looking through the loope you were able to tell that the spotty effect of gold was most likely not intentional. The gold was worn or torn and the excess edges had smashed down after being torn. None of this was seen by the naked eye and that just caught me off guard by how much you can't see and how much magnification revealed the inlay/overlay method. If you are seeing cross hatching that most likely means that the gold was inlayed by pounding the gold into the grooves unlike gilding where mecury was used to join the gold to the base metal. If you didn't know gilding with mercury was a nice method of getting sick and many makers didn't live long, nothing says blood poisoning like playing with mecury. I believe mecury was an old method of application and can help date a piece but I am not sure if its use was used throughout the centuries or not. Anyway, the point is, a loupe can expose a lot and reveal a lot about how the piece was made.

 

Just rereading the comments above, I don't think uttori method was done with hatching either although I may be wrong, I think it was overlaying the gold but anchoring it down around the edges. Therefore it is easy to pick the gold off while the mercury gilding method is a much stronger bond of the gold to the base metal. I would agree on the cross hatching as an indication of nunomezogan and not gilding (the pounding in vs bonding method).