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Old 15 January 2018, 08:15 AM   #14
jar
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Join Date: Nov 2016
Real Name: jim
Location: Deep South Texas
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Returning to the Far East; The Tongue Cut Sparrow

Once there was a kindly old farmer who lived at the edge of the bamboo forest. One day while he was working his field he found an injured sparrow. It was cold and wet and pitiful and the old man picked it up and rushed home. He held the little bird against his chest to warm it and fed it some rice on his finger and soon it was hopping around and chirping. It flew up onto the rafters and settled down.

The old man laughed and smiled. "Look after the little thing.", he told has wife as he went back to the fields.

Now his wife was not as kindly as him and she did not want him wasting food on some bird. When it flew back down begging to be fed she hit it with her broom, cut out its tongue and threw it out the window.

When the old man returned that evening and found the little bird missing she said that the bird had bitten her and then she had chased it away. Worried, the old man went out looking for the little sparrow to make sure it was not hurt. He heard some sparrows in the bamboo forest and followed the sounds until he found a patch near an Ume tree where lots of sparrows gathered. They all greeted him and thanked him for taking care of the little bird. To reward him they offered him his choice of two baskets, one large, one small. Being old and tired from his long day of work, he chose the smaller and carried it back to his house.

He told his wife all about the sparrow's inn and the two baskets and how happy the sparrows seemed. When they opened the basket they found it filled with some fine silk and jewels. His wife was furious; "Why didn't you get the big basket?" she shouted. She stormed out of the house and went to search for the sparrows in. When she found it she grabbed the big basket even though the sparrows begged her not to take it.

On the way home she simply could not wait to see all the jewels and treasure it must hold and so opened the box to find it filled with snakes and scorpions. She was so frightened that she ran away and was never seen again.

The old man missed his wife, even though she was a nag, but the sparrows stopped by every day and cheered him up and when he needed money (which was very seldom) he sold some of the silks or jewels and lived a long and happy life.


Long ago, when I was exploring the Walters Art Gallery I was taught the tale of the Tongue Cut Sparrow and sparrows in Ume Trees (flowering apricots) are a common theme in many Japanese prints. This next pen is a Danitrio with maki-e artwork by the Dento Kogei-shi Masanori (Masanori Omote) and based on the Tale of the Tongue Cut Sparrow. It depicts the sparrows on bamboo and in a Ume tree.


Unlike earlier examples this is all created using very fine precious metals carefully places using fine bamboo tubes. As with the others the first step is to create the urushi base, this time simply Kuro (black) but many, many individual layers each cured and then sanded before the next layer is applied.

The final layer serves as the base for the art work, finely ground gold allows carefully placed using the black background to form the lines outlining forms.

Let's begin moving in to see the details. The most prominent feature is the bamboo stalk that runs almost the full length of the pen. Notice that the joint between bamboo sections is set right at the cap to tie together the cap and body.


If we look closely we can see that different sizes and colors of powder were used to create texture and voids where no powder is applied to visually add details.




The Sparrows and the Ume Blossoms were created the same way.







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