An unpublished catalogue of the A. H. Church collection of Japanese sword-guards (tsuba) by Albert James Koop.
Hamano [Japanese text] Shōzui (1696-1769), a pupil of Nara Toshinaga I founded a most important school, which worked in the spirit of the later Ko-Nara masters, but stands out boldly by its extraordinary fertility in the use of the softer metals and alloys and the brilliancy and vividness of its encrusted reliefs. The Hamano workers seem to ply an inexhaustible palette of colours, and the exuberance and perfect finish of their decoration images the luxury of the age and foreshadows that decadent straining after effect which mars much of the later 19th century work. They display a tendency to higher relief than the Nara generally, although some of their work is in the shishiai-bori style of the Jōi group. The predilection shown by Toshinga I for war-scenes and other subjects with a human interest is largely followed by Shōzui and his successors, but motives based on inanimate nature and not disdained.
The school numbers a host of renowned pupils, among whom the Akabumi of Shōnai are dealt with in [another chapter].
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