So very often in my life I have encountered numerous people who feel the need to make and affirmation of their own self independently of the subject they are dealing with. My own perspective as a designer is that I do not feel the urge to affirm myself by ignoring the subject/object to be treated, in this case a beautiful Ô-tanto by Louis Mills.
There are occasions when a designer should not make a full aesthetical statement of his own. Instead he should first of all interpret the spirit of a subject, whether it is a knife, sword, or an apartment.
Had I the time and the ability to make a project like this beautiful piece by Jim Kelso, and I would not hesitate to lend an entirely new approach as I have done to this less traditional but very beautiful tanto by Dan Pfanenstiel by conceiving an entirely different design of a contemporary nature.
However, Louis Mills is one of the best Japanese traditional style sword makers out of Japan. Not having both time and the ability to make something absolutely fantastic like Jim Kelso's wakizashi, I had to resort to my historical memory and the concept that existed in the Muromachi period, whereas I limited myself to a very narrow specter of creativity in respect for a very beautiful tanto that had could also have a very contemporary minimalist look.
In fact many people are not aware that Zen precedes the Western concept of minimalism, hence that the ignorant will criticize something he is not aware of, exactly because there has never been more audacity than the one displayed by an ignorant.
This being said, this project represents the choice and role of a designer that has to work long distance, has to assess the style in which the craftsman he works with is comfortable, and has very little time. All these are very relevant considerations in a designer's role: to be reasonable and to know the limits of feasibility.

This picture was taken in a wink, without much preparation, about 3 years ago when I purchased it.

To fully understand the piece, suffice to say that the color scheme is predominantly black and gold plus a stone that will be cut and fitted back in Macau which has golden tones.
Now let us go into the finished shape interpretation. I believe it is a good thing to make a first overall tour.

These scans of the 1997 Tokyo National Museum Catalog's huge exhibition shows the very minimalist look of the original mountings that I found to be extremely appealing, specially because my mind was sparked with the silk tsuka wrap and the wooden kashira which prompted me to change it to a more unusual stone approach.

For the mounting purpose, I managed after some efforts to find a mud dyed silk to be used instead of the samekawa. It comes closer to the tsuka material. This mud dyed silk front side is black while the reverse side is brown, as shown, and has been thoroughly glued with material glue that melts and glues through heat, as can be seen in white.
The work mounting was done by Randy Black, the best mountings professional craftsman that I have worked with.

The communication between designer and craftsman must be entirely successful, and I do prefer excess of information, even when it is obvious than lack of it. To revive this is - I believe - an interesting aspect of the cooperation work.

This is a clickable image for a much larger one. Let me describe the design:
The first look shows a long sleek aikuchi style tanto with tsunakuchi (hook) a rounded horn kurikata with gold plated shitodome.
The blackness of the saya and it's 17.5 inches (yes, no mistake here) length provides this elongated look. The Kojiri is slightly protruding, just a small detail of refinement. The horn Koiguchi meets a piece of brass that is 3 mm thick followed by a horn piece 6 mm thick that is like the fuchi. Actually what I conceived is a brass seppa that is 3 mm thick, in full contact (but not glued) to the horn fuchi.

So, up to now what I missed saying is that the tsuka has a supplied high quality black silk wrap and a 3 mm thick copper ring whose existence is to end the samekawa area and provide a transition to the stone. We will later see how this is all put together.