NYTimes 'Museums' (I)

choi

On Mar 20, 2014 New York Times had a rare special section titled Museums, containing the following three articles among others.

Ted Loos, What Comes Next, After the Troops Are Dismissed; An armory museum closes and finds a new home.
www.nytimes.com/2014/03/20/arts/ ... -are-dismissed.html
(“The nearly 83-year-old Higgins Armory Museum in Worcester, Mass, which closed its striking, fortresslike building permanently on Dec 31[, 2013] * * * But despite the shuttering, many ['about 2,000 works * * * including a rare conch-shaped Japanese iron helmet from the early 17th century'] of the helmets, breastplates and knives that the museum’s founder, John Woodman Higgins, collected will be on display again — across town, at the Worcester Art Museum. The exhibit, 'Knights,' opens March 29. * * * 2,500 other Higgins works that the former museum is selling”)

Note:
(a) Knights!  Worcester Art Museum, Mar 29-, 2014.
www.worcesterart.org/Exhibitions/knights/

(b) "the Higgins was founded in a very different era. Construction on its then-advanced steel-and-glass building began in 1929, and it opened in 1931."
(i) Higgins Armory Museum
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Higgins_Armory_Museum
(1931-2004; "'the only museum in the country devoted solely to arms and armor,' and had the second largest arms and armor collection in the country behind the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City"/ It is still unknown what will be done with the Higgins Armory building which is believed to be one of, if not the first, building in the US constructed solely out of steel & glass [photo])
(ii) legend of a photo in this Wiki page: “Helmet embossed in the form of a conch shell (awabi uchidashi kabuto), Japan, 1618. Made by Nagasone Tojiro Mitsumasa; signed "Echizen no kuni ju Mitsumasa; Nagasone Tojiro saku"
(A) I spent the entire evening endeavoring to decipher the sentence, finally succeeded in cracking it. You see, the item is in US, so rarely did Japanese discuss it. When they do, they are just like me, unaware who this guy was--at least unaware how his name is written in Japanese (so they just left intact the English spelling, in an otherwise Japanese writing).
(B) The signature must be in Japanese.

“Echizen no kuni ju Mitsumasa; Nagasone Tōjiro saku”  (The macron signifies a long vowel.)
越前国 住 (or 鋳) 光正; 長曽祢 藤次郎 作

* Echizen Province  
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Echizen_Province
(越前国 whose pronunciation is “echizen no kuni”)
constitutes the principal portion of the present-day Fukui Prefecture 福井県.
* The “saku” is the Chinese pronunciation of kanji 作.
(C) What about “Helmet embossed in the form of a conch shell (awabi uchidashi kabuto), Japan, 1618. Made by Nagasone Tōjiro Mitsumasa”?
* Nagasone Tojiro Mitsumasa = 長曽祢 藤次郎 光正  (See (e)(ii) below, which is the only Web page in the entire internet where “長曽祢藤次郎光正作” appears.)
(D) The “awabi uchidashi kabuto” appears to be coined by Americans (if not Westerners), not Japanese.

Category:Awabi uchidashi kabuto
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Awabi_uchidashi_kabuto

Japanese English dictionary:
* awabi 鮑 (n): “abalone”  [None of the five helmets looks like an abalone. It looks like Americans did not know “awabi” means “abalone.”]
* kabuto 兜 (n): “helmet”
* kawari kabuto  変わり兜
* kawari 変わり 【かわり】 (n): "(1) change; alteration; (2) unusual state or event"  {It is the second definition here, meaning “普段と違った状態。異状,” according to an online Japanese dictionary (translation: the status of differing from the common).

* For “hora-gai,”  see ホラガイ
ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/ホラガイ
(法螺貝; Charonia tritonis; 日本に産する最大級の巻貝)

* uchidashi  打ち出し (n). The verb is
uchidasu 打ち出す 【うちだす】(v): “[example:] <その便せんには校章が打ち出しにされている。 The note is embossed with the school emblem.?”   [binsen 便せん/便箋 【びんせん】(n)]
Jim Breen’s online Japanese dictionary

An illustration depicting two manners to beat a metal plate into shape: 打ち出し
members.jcom.home.ne.jp/momo-artlab/utidasi.html
(E) Rather, Japanese identify that in the Higgins Armoury Museum (Japanese: ヒギンズ甲冑博物館) as サザエの兜.

sazae  サザエ
ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/サザエ
(栄螺; Turbo cornutus; 棘のある殻も特徴的である [translation: spined shell is characteristic])


(c) Worcester Art Museum
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worcester_Art_Museum
(established in 1896 by Stephen Salisbury III)

(d) "For now, the 'Knights!' show will include not only a German cuirass and an Italian boarding sword from the Higgins trove but also a full Batman suit worn by Michael Keaton in the 1989 movie."
(i)
(A) cuirass
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuirass
(B) cuirass (m; Middle English curas, from Middle French cuirasse, from Late Latin coreacea, feminine of coreaceus leathern, from Latin corium skin, leather)
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cuirass
(ii) For boarding knife, see
(A) cutlass
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cutlass
("the cutlass is best known as the sailor's weapon of choice * * * Employing it effectively required less training than that required to master a rapier or small sword, and it was more effective as a close-combat weapon than a full-sized sword would be on a cramped ship")
(B) naval boarding
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_boarding
(Boarding weapons in the Age of Sail consisted of cutlasses [among other things] * * * Spanish and Portuguese sailors, especially officers, were known to use the rapier throughout the 17th and even into the 18th century, but the close-quarter nature of boarding combat rendered these lengthy swords very ineffective)
(C) Swords, Art, Playground and Caroling--Oh My! The Colorado Adventure, Dec 22, 2009 (blog)
highlandshomeschool.homeschooljournal.net/2009/12/22/swords-art-playground-and-caroling-oh-my/
("Grace [blogger's daughter] thought this sword was interesting, it’s a naval sword called a boarding sword from the 1500′s. It was probably made in Italy and weighs 3 lbs. The serrated edge was used to saw through ropes on boarded ships")
(D) serrated blade
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serrated_blade

(e) The legend of photo 3 reads, “Antique Japanese cuirass dō 胴 from the 1600s made from individual large scales (hon iyozane).”
(i) hon 本 = true
(ii) 甲冑の美. 福井市立郷土歴史博物館, 平成25年10月11日-11月24日
www.history.museum.city.fukui.fu ... isetsusheets/78.pdf
(“長曽祢藤次郎光正作”; “伊予札（いよざね）… 甲冑を構成する小札の一種。鉄製の小札をへりの部分を浅く重ねてつづるように作ったもの。少ない枚数で軽くかつ安価に作れる”)

translation: Iyozane … a kind of kozane that constitutes armor. Kozane panels composed of iron [enclosed in leather covering] would be overlapped slightly at the edge to make it [the cuirass]. [The panels in Iyozane being larger than those used in the traditional kozane cuirass,] fewer panels renders the cuirass lighter (in weight) and cheaper.
(iii) a definition from an online Japanese dictionary:

iyo-zane 伊予札: "鎧(よろい)の小札(こざね)の一種。伊予の職人により考案された。多くは鉄製で、左右の両端を少し重ねてとじ合わせる。室町時代ごろから流行した。伊予小札。"
dictionary.goo.ne.jp/leaf/jn2/15312/m0u/

translation: invented by craftsmen in 伊予.
(iv) Iyo Province  伊予国
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iyo_Province
(v) Japanese English dictionary
* kozane 小札; 小実 【こざね】 (n): "armor platelet"
* sane 札 【さね】 (n): "armor platelet"
* 綴じ合わせる; 綴じ合せる 【とじあわせる】 (v): “to bind together (eg the pages of a book); to sew up; to tape together; to stitch together”

(f) “He [Jeffrey Forgeng, a curator at the Higgins] added that the continuing prominent display of the Higgins collection would help get across the idea that instead of an eccentric museum byway [in Worcester Art Museum], arms and armor were vital to the history of art.”

byway (n): "a little traveled side road"
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/byway

(g) “‘The armor that Philip of Spain wore was arguably more important than the paintings of him,’ Mr Forgeng said, referring to famous likenesses by great painters like Peter Paul Rubens and Velázquez. ‘He had multiple suits of armor for different occasions. Just as today, people use clothing to declaim who they are.’”
(i) Philip IV of Spain
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_IV_of_Spain
(1605-1665; King of Spain 1621-1665)
(ii) Peter Paul Rubens
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Paul_Rubens
(1577-1640; a Flemish Baroque painter)
(iii) Diego Velázquez
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diego_Velázquez
(1599-1660; a Spanish painter who was the leading [Baroque] artist in the court of King Philip IV; legend of a portrait: "Philip IV in Brown and Silver, 1632")
(iv) declaim (v) :"to speak pompously or bombastically"
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/declaim