Die Sieben Weisen im Bambushain
The Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove, Soten
An oval Soten tsuba of polished shakudo, cut through so that the plate becomes a bamboo grove. The stems rise across the whole field, and between them the light falls through. Gold clouds hang along the upper edge. Below, among the stems, the sages sit and talk, worked in relief with colour inlay. All seven are on the front. Turn the guard over and only one of them remains in view, a sage of the front seen from behind through the openwork.
Das Objekt
The NTHK paper describes an oval plate with two hitsu-ana, polished shakudo with the rim left standing, worked in nikubori-sukashi, relief combined with openwork, and iroe-zogan, colour inlay. It dates the guard to the middle of the Edo period. The bamboo is not drawn on the plate. It is the plate, with everything that is not bamboo cut away.
Die Szene
JAANUS, the dictionary of Japanese art terms, names the seven: Ruan Ji, Ji Kang, Shan Tao, Xiang Xiu, Liu Ling, Wang Rong and Ruan Xian. In the troubled Wei and Jin periods they withdrew to a bamboo grove, where they were free for pure conversation, music and wine. JAANUS adds that the subject was popular with Japanese painters of the Momoyama and early Edo periods.
Die signierte Seite
The signature runs down both sides of the tang opening on the front. On the right: Goshu Hikone ju, living at Hikone in Omi province. On the left: Soheishi Nyudo Soten.
Soten und Hikone
A. J. Koop, cataloguing the A. H. Church collection of sword guards for the Ashmolean Museum, describes the Soten school of Hikone, founded by Kitagawa Soten around the middle of the seventeenth century. Its work gave Hikone-bori its name. The signature most often found, Koop writes, is that of the second Soten, Soheishi Nyudo, and it is perhaps more widely forged than any other. Its favourite subjects came from Chinese history and legend.
Koop describes the school’s guards as mostly iron. This one is shakudo, and the NTHK has papered it with its signature.
The Soten Tsuba
Tsuba. Signiert Goshu Hikone ju Soheishi Nyudo Soten. Shakudo migaki-ji, nikubori-sukashi, iroe-zogan, Mimi stehen gelassen. Naga-maru-gata, zwei Hitsu-ana. Chikurin shichiken-zu, sieben Figuren auf der Vorderseite. Mittlere Edo-Zeit. NTHK Kanteisho. Privatsammlung, erworben in Japan.
In the collection
- Type
- Tosogu › Tsuba
- School
- Soten
- Period
- Edo-Zeit › Mittlere Edo-Zeit
- Material
- Shakudo
- Motif
- Mensch und Legende
