Not the weight of the gold —
the weight of the story.
The Keifu-ban (系譜板, "lineage plate") is a single plate of pure gold, bound to one house alone. It is not bullion, measured by the market.
On its face, the house's emblem is cut by the artisan's hand and inscribed by the master in ink and cipher. Its reverse is the record: a name added with each generation that follows. The more time passes, the more singular it becomes — the one gold in the world that is only yours.
As the great ōban of Edo were made true not by their weight but by the brushed signature and cipher (花押, kaō) of the master of the Gotō house — so here, worth lives not in the metal, but in who inscribed it, when, and by whose living hand.
Every old house
was once the first.
To have no heirloom to inherit is not a lack. It is the rare chance to be the origin — the first hand that a house's line is passed from. A marriage, a company founded, a family begun: at the threshold of a life, one commissions the first plate of a house. The hand that hands it down, for the first time, becomes yours.
We do not entrust it to the cloud.
Authenticity is not left to an app or an electronic record. It is proven the way Japanese craft has proven it for four centuries — without a machine — by the singularity of a hand and the chain of a record. Four physical proofs accompany every plate.
The signed box共箱
A paulownia box, inscribed by the artisan in ink with mark, cipher and year — matched against the mark within the plate. A double signature.
Mark & cipher銘・花押
The maker's hand-cut mark. The habit of the stroke cannot be reproduced — by machine or by another hand. It is a fingerprint.
The master's seal当主の極め
The head of a four-hundred-year house judges the piece true, by his own living hand, and sets his cipher to the certificate. One guarantor, named.
The bound ledger和綴じ台帳
A hand-bound register of each plate's provenance — inheritance, restoration, each generation's cut — written on, by hand, down the years.
From the first conversation
to the renewal of a generation.
Conversation
Your house, its story, what you intend to carry forward. Unhurried, and by introduction.
Design
The emblem, the form, the material and the words — drawn together with you.
Making
The artisans of the four-hundred-year house cut, forge and inscribe by hand. A month of work.
The master's seal
On the day of completion, the master judges it true by hand and binds plate, box, certificate and ledger — the sealing rite.
Delivery
Presented as one whole. The rite may be held at the atelier in Japan, or arranged privately, with discretion, wherever you are.
Renewal of a generation
At each passing of the line, the plate returns; a new name is cut; the master renews the seal. A long relationship with a house.
With a twelfth-generation silversmith.
The Keifu-ban is wrought by a house of silversmiths four hundred years and twelve generations old. Its high craft, once near extinction as its work dwindled, is bound again to a lasting purpose — the thresholds of a family. It is the master of that house who judges each piece true.
The steward
The house is stewarded by one who was raised in Japan yet holds an outside eye — not a self-styled grandmaster, but the bridge between the workshops, the families, and the world; a keeper and a translator. What is guaranteed is not bloodline, but the provenance of the object — who made it, when, of what, and what the master judged true. An honest record.
We draw the line, plainly.
The first plate of your house.
A handful of families each year, received unhurried and in confidence.
Begin by telling us the story of your house.