SWORD-FURNITURE
hundred years of unprecedented peace, and the various principalities throughout the empire, ceasing to be disturbed by problems of military expansion and perils or projects of aggression, had become competitive centres of art production.
At the opening of the century Gorobei of Kyōtō is found chiselling iron guards with decoration à jour so skilfully that the term kinai, which had previously been used to designate particularly delicate and elaborate work of this description was now replaced by Daigoro-saku, a name obtained by compounding the first ideographs of 'Daimonji-ya, as the artists' atelier was called, and "Gorobei." Contemporaneous with Gorobei was Shōyemon, called also Tomoyoshi or Yūki, who has had few peers as a maker of mokume grounds. Shōyemon is generally known as Nomura Masa-ya.[1] He entered the service of the feudal chief of Awa, and founded a branch of the Nomura family in Tokushima, the capital of that fief. It should be noted that Yedo was the seat of the elder branch of the Nomura family, which was founded by Masatoki (1660), and gave to Japan a number of well-remembered experts,—Masanori (art name, Itoku, 1790), Masayoshi (art name, Suihaku, 1760); Masatsugu (1760); Masayoshi (art name, Katōji, 1790), and others. All these experts excelled in the production of mokume, but were also appreciated for their chiselling in relief. The most celebrated of all the Nomura masters was Jimpō (1750), commonly called Tsū Jimpō. He took his designs from the pictures of Tanyu, the greatest artist of the preceding century, and his chiselling shows extraordinary minuteness and delicacy. Numerous imitations of his work were
- ↑ See Appendix, note 44.
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