A tale of two tsubas - same guy, same shop, or....?

[Henry Wilson]

Interesting indeed

 

Lorenzo, could you elaborate....

[Lorenzo]

Ah sorry, I am not stating it, I was just requesting. If the earlier period saya wasn't symmetrical in section, quote:

 

The early koto saya on the other hand was a more flattened oval or slightly 'egg' shaped and these shapes can be seen reflected in the seppa dai of some older tsuba, particularly tachi tsuba.

 

By seeing some early fuchi we could find some similarity in shape. (question opened :D )

 

Sorry for my English

 

Lorenzo

[Lorenzo]

Yesterday I was watching my books and this popped out.

 

 

 

Signed Hayashi Shigemitsu, nidai. I thought it was in some way interesting for the topic currently under discussion.

[Mark Green]

No doubt there.

What a pile of add on Sekigane around that Seppa-dai.

Obviously for fitting to a new sword size.

Good find Lorenzo.

[b.hennick]

Here is another tsuba that has had extensive work done so that it would fit a scabbard. I bought the tsuba mainly because of the additions that were interesting.

Some one must have really liked this tsuba in order to have a person go to so much work on it.

[Toryu2020]

Barry -

almost gives it an Umetada feeling, very nice.

-t

[rkg]

Hi,

sorry to have neglected my own thread for so long, but life happens... :-/

 

First, I still don't know what to make of the seppa dai shape/nakago ana placement. I've seen a couple of other early pieces with "off"

up placement, but in general one would think they should be centered There's an early partially finished hizen tsuba floating around that

is roughed out but has a fairly carefully placed/finished nakago ana. On the other hand, I recently got an opportunity to study a fairly large

number of over-the-top "tourist" tsubas, and none of them exhibited this (though quite a few exhibited work/inlays extending well into

the seppa area, etc.). Its also been suggested it had something to do with the balance of the completed sword/tsuka combination. Its

also a little confusing in that it looks like the piece has been re-mounted a couple of times at least (you can see subtle work in the nakago

ana), and they keep using the same placement for whatever reason - or somebody went to a hell of a lot of work to replicate all the little

tweaks.

 

Second, on the finish. I've been told you do see showa pieces that exhibit the carefully manipulated surface features shown. But if you look at it closely the finish seems to exhibit an "age" to it that at least I hope nobody can replicate easily - if that's so we're screwed as collectors.

 

One of the things I've been working on is testing how to display items in an e-book or app - I just got done with a test image of this piece.

The file is pretty huge (10 megabytes), but you're welcome to look at it. Note that you can zoom in 2x on this, rotate it around, etc. Its at:

 

http://www.rkgphotos.com/recent_stuff/t ... ktime.html

 

If you zoom in and look at the patina, maybe you can see what I mean.

 

Also, WRT the comparison of the two tsubas, someone I talked to pointed out that apparently people would take rubbings of tsuba they

liked, which were then presented to a tsubako to be used for making a copy - and apparently they were seldom perfect copies as things

would get lost in translation and be left up to the next guy to fill in the details. I mention this because it was suggested that perhaps one

of them is a some number of copies removed copy of the other.

 

Anyway, thanks again to all of those who have taken the time to post on this piece.

 

Best,

 

rkg

(Richard George)

 

P.S. I just realized I have an image of another "goofy"nakago ana placement:

 

http://home.teleport.com/~rkg/photos/ts ... _small.JPG

[rkg]

Hey guys,

 

Before I forget completely, there's a very similar piece to the monkey/moon themed tsuba I started this thread with in the February 2012 Choshuya catalog, including the offest nakago ana. I think

its in better condition than mine, but still... It was papered to Ko-shoami, and...

 

Its near the bottom of this page - item 16:

 

http://www.choshuya.co.jp/sale/gj/2012/ ... /index.htm

 

Best,

 

rkg

(Richard George)

[Steve Waszak]

Hi Rich,

 

Thanks for posting this link...

 

I went back and re-read this thread, and I am still not convinced by the argument that the "off-balance" seppa-dai is a matter of the poor execution to be found on very latter-day tsuba. Or even on early tsuba. I understand the logic of the points made here regarding fitting the tsuba to the koshirae, of course. But here's the problem for me: in examining the tsuba Rich has provided the link to here, we can see this "misshapen" seppa-dai. But we can also see no small degree of care being put into the design and execution of the tsuba. The rendering of the monkey's face and fur was not done in slap-dash fashion, and some care was taken, too, in finishing the sukashi, etc... My point is that for all of this concern to be given to these various aspects of finishing the tsuba, are we then supposed to believe that the tsubako was so inept that he couldn't see the "out-of-balance" look to the seppa-dai, or, if he could see this, that he was incapable of creating "balanced" seppa-dai? This makes little sense to me.

 

A second point: we see these out-of-balance seppa-dai from time to time, but not infrequently, they are unbalanced in the same way. Such a pattern of unbalance suggests that they are not unbalanced at all, rather, that we simply don't understand the reasons for deliberately rendering seppa-dai this way.

 

I'm happy to be wrong in what I'm saying here, but I'm genuinely confused by the assertion that what we're seeing here is occurring due to sloppiness on the part of the tsubako, and by the implication that the same kind of sloppiness is recurring coincidentally.

 

Cheers,

 

Steve

[christianmalterre]

how about the idea that Nr.1(Rich´s) is Original and Nr.2 (Rich´s friend) is an much latter done Utsushi?

I can follow your´s question Steven,equally do see those points mentioned by Bruce,Reinhard and Ford here...which all do include parts of obviously to be seen facts...i rather think-there´s an maybe error in conclusion here(?)

To be honest-actually i do see Nr 2 as quite comparatively modern(very late Edo)

 

Of course-this discussion will not proof any fact-we had(equally)the need in comparing the both in hands..actually,i but guess-Nr. 2 is equally much heavier in it´s weight(compared with #1 again here-even if those dimensions seem to be rather equal)

Just an idea-purely speculative....

 

(and just one point more here to considder: The Iron of #1 is very good!-The Iron of #2 but! is not that good comparatively...)

 

Christian