The Kano (加納) school of kinko metalwork centers on the towering figure of Kanō Natsuo (1828–1898), the master whom the NBTHK setsumei consistently acclaim as "the last great master of machibori" (町彫, town carving). Born in Kyoto in Bunsei 11 (1828), Natsuo was adopted while still young by the sword dealer Kanō Jisuke, whose family name the lineage bears. At twelve he entered the atelier of the metalworker Okumura Shōhachi, and at fourteen he studied metalworking techniques under Ikeda Kōju of the Ōtsuki school, signing his early work Jurō (寿朗) before adopting the name Natsuo. " At twenty-seven he went to Edo, where he refined his art and achieved full maturity, answering the commissions of daimyo houses and private patrons alike: a tsuba "made at the request of the Katō family," and a celebrated wind-blown bamboo tsuba transmitted in the Satake family, lords of Akita domain. The school's shared vocabulary unites an exceptional range of grounds and techniques under a painter's discipline. Grounds include polished iron (migaki-ji), shakudō in nanako-ji (rare, and characteristic of the early period) and arashi-ji, the "day-and-night" composite of iron and shibuichi (chūya-jitate), and the hallmark tiger-stripe (torafu) shibuichi.

Upon these, relief in sukidashi-takabori of "markedly dignified" character is joined by katakiribori and kebori — the V-cut engraving that mimics the ink brush — together with hira-zōgan, suemon-zōgan, nunome-zōgan, and keshikomi-zōgan, and polychrome iroe employing gold, silver, shakudō, suaka, shibuichi, brass, and even shell inlay. " Grounded in meticulous sketching from life in the Maruyama–Shijō spirit, the compositions reserve broad expanses of space and give particular weight to "the layers of atmosphere that fill that space"; the ability to express a subject "with tasteful restraint and an effortless clarity" despite employing a variety of metals and methods is, the setsumei observe, the school's true strength. The pictorial tsuba tradition is consciously invoked — Natsuo's study of Kaneie, "revered as the founder of so-called pictorial-style tsuba (efū tsuba)," is explicit in his own notes, and the influence of Yasuchika is likewise discerned — across motifs ranging from fish, egrets and willows, geese in rain, peonies, and the Four Gentlemen to the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove, kyōgen scenes, and the moon upon the water. With the Meiji Restoration the school's legacy passed beyond sword fittings into the new nation's artistic metalwork: Natsuo was entrusted by the government with the master models for casting the new coinage, entered the Osaka Mint in Meiji 2, and in Meiji 23 (1890) became a professor at the Tokyo School of Fine Arts, being selected that same year as one of the first Teishitsu Gigeiin (Imperial Household Artists). " Bridging the late Edo decorative tradition and Meiji artistic metalwork, the Kano school stands at the very summit of the tosogu canon. Learn more →

The Kano (加納) school of kinko metalwork centers on the towering figure of Kanō Natsuo (1828–1898), the master whom the NBTHK setsumei consistently acclaim as "the last great master of machibori" (町彫, town carving). Born in Kyoto in Bunsei 11 (1828), Natsuo was adopted while still young by the sword dealer Kanō Jisuke, whose family name the lineage bears. At twelve he entered the atelier of the metalworker Okumura Shōhachi, and at fourteen he studied metalworking techniques under Ikeda Kōju of the Ōtsuki school, signing his early work Jurō (寿朗) before adopting the name Natsuo. " At twenty-seven he went to Edo, where he refined his art and achieved full maturity, answering the commissions of daimyo houses and private patrons alike: a tsuba "made at the request of the Katō family," and a celebrated wind-blown bamboo tsuba transmitted in the Satake family, lords of Akita domain. The school's shared vocabulary unites an exceptional range of grounds and techniques under a painter's discipline. Grounds include polished iron (migaki-ji), shakudō in nanako-ji (rare, and characteristic of the early period) and arashi-ji, the "day-and-night" composite of iron and shibuichi (chūya-jitate), and the hallmark tiger-stripe (torafu) shibuichi.

Upon these, relief in sukidashi-takabori of "markedly dignified" character is joined by katakiribori and kebori — the V-cut engraving that mimics the ink brush — together with hira-zōgan, suemon-zōgan, nunome-zōgan, and keshikomi-zōgan, and polychrome iroe employing gold, silver, shakudō, suaka, shibuichi, brass, and even shell inlay. " Grounded in meticulous sketching from life in the Maruyama–Shijō spirit, the compositions reserve broad expanses of space and give particular weight to "the layers of atmosphere that fill that space"; the ability to express a subject "with tasteful restraint and an effortless clarity" despite employing a variety of metals and methods is, the setsumei observe, the school's true strength. The pictorial tsuba tradition is consciously invoked — Natsuo's study of Kaneie, "revered as the founder of so-called pictorial-style tsuba (efū tsuba)," is explicit in his own notes, and the influence of Yasuchika is likewise discerned — across motifs ranging from fish, egrets and willows, geese in rain, peonies, and the Four Gentlemen to the Seven Sages of the Bamboo Grove, kyōgen scenes, and the moon upon the water. With the Meiji Restoration the school's legacy passed beyond sword fittings into the new nation's artistic metalwork: Natsuo was entrusted by the government with the master models for casting the new coinage, entered the Osaka Mint in Meiji 2, and in Meiji 23 (1890) became a professor at the Tokyo School of Fine Arts, being selected that same year as one of the first Teishitsu Gigeiin (Imperial Household Artists). " Bridging the late Edo decorative tradition and Meiji artistic metalwork, the Kano school stands at the very summit of the tosogu canon. Learn more →