Is it a Menuki, or a Mae-kanagu?

[Bugyotsuji]

Just for my own clarification I took the following shots to illustrate the difference between a Menuki and a Mae-kanagu purse clasp. We all know that in many cases the same artisan may have made both. They both appear for sale as a single item; often a single Menuki can be puzzling.

 

Essentially a Menuki has a central (rectangular) protruding chunk on the back to help it fit flush against the tsuka, without slipping sideways in any direction. There may be no other evidence of fitting on the reverse. See pine needle and cone Menuki pics 1,2 and 3.

 

NB Sometimes a Menuki might have been used in a new life as a purse clasp adornment, and it may bear witness of such in extra (soldered) pins on the reverse.

[Bugyotsuji]

A clasp decoration for a purse usually has two wires soldered to the reverse, and these have been cut for freeing from an old and maybe useless pouch.

 

This Mae-kanagu shows Daruma floating on a leaf. It is small and delicate and one wonders how it managed to scrape through relatively intact like this.

 

The present examples of a Menuki and a Mae-kanagu were bought last Sunday from a dealer in sword fittings. Neither was bank-bustingly expensive, and there was not a huge difference in price.

 

For those members who already knew all of this, apologies. Sometimes it takes me time to get my head around unspoken but obvious things!

[Baka Gaijin]

Morning Piers,

 

The charming Mae-kanagu of Daruma may hold a few more secrets......

 

The leaf he is sitting upon looks like a tea leaf.

 

One story relates that Daruma cut off his eyelids to stop himself from falling asleep during his nine year meditation.

 

The discarded eyelids grew into the first Tea plant.

 

Cheers

[Bugyotsuji]

Oops, you saved me from editing the post to say "looks like a bamboo leaf"!!! :lol:

 

I am quite happy with the tea-leaf, er... Camellia Sinensis leaf story.

[IanB]

Piers, One very obvious difference between these two similar objects is the thickness of the metal. Most pouch clasps seem to be formed out of relatively thin sheet whereas real menuki have thick walls. I assume the latter were made that way because they had to withstand the pressure on them from the tsuka ito.

Ian Bottomley

[Bugyotsuji]

Ian, yes, that makes sense.

 

There is the other factor of whether they were cast, carved or hammered out from inside, which I also need to get to grips with.

[IanB]

Piers, That is a very thorny question. Whilst I accept that menuki were made by repousse, a lot of pouch clasps seem to have been made in a die or mould. It sounds a lot of work but the silver trade in Sheffield made millions of such dies out of iron, brass or bronze by casting or carving, followed by a bit of tidying up and polishing. Using these they could turn out small decorative elements by the thousand faster than you would believe. In Sheffield they used a kind of drop hammer with the male half of the die on the bottom, pulled up by a rope and released. Crude but cheap and simple. Another way that only needs a female die is to use lead. The thin sheet of annealed copper or shakudo or whatever is placed over the die and covered with a piece of lead. A good bashing forces the lead and sheet into the die so that it takes up the design. After trimming the edges and maybe a bit of work on the outside with a graver or punches, and possibly mercury gilding odd areas, you could turn out very respectable pouch clasps by the hundreds. That this method was used is evident on those ghastly boxes covered in 'menuki' made in the Meiji period. In many cases they didn't even bother cleaning off the excess metal - just cutting roughly around the outline.

Ian

[Infinite_Wisdumb]

thankful for this thread!