This autographed go board came to Baduk Club from an antique shop in Kanagawa, Japan. It comes with a cloth cover and a paperboard lid.
The board was signed by the 9dan professional player Cho Chikun (趙治勲). At the top he has inscribed Fertility (豊巧) which is a popular calligraphy choice. According to Wikipedia his original name was 豊衍 (ほうえん) and he was renamed at age 1 or 2, so we think this selection of kanji is a clever way for him to point to that.
Cho Chikun is one of the greatest players of our time, with 76 titles in his career. In fact, he won over 60% of his 125 title matches, earning many nicknames including "The 7th Game Demon." He retains the title 25th Honorary Honinbo, on account of having won that tournament more than ten times. The autograph is in excellent shape. We can provide examples of previous autographs he has done to verify the authenticity of his signature.
I'm a huge Cho Chikun fan, so we previously sold a physical copy of 28 weekly newspaper columns about him dating from 2020 and 2021. The series covered interesting episodes (some as far back as 60 years ago) in his long career, along with illustrative photos. The full scan of the 28-page set is available here for free (please note it is a large file, about 50mb).
The board itself has a warm heartwood. It has many of the hallmarks of Katsura, with tight grain pattern and an orange heartwood that is a consistent color across the entire board. It is a Kiura cut, the most preferred style for a Plain-sawn board. This cutting style shows off the growth rings of the tree on the ends where the players will sit, and the sides of the board will have straight lines. Soft heartwood ripples appear on the underside and the playing surface, giving the impression of wind on water. The grid is the traditional raised-lacquer style.
The corners and edges look good, and the white wax residue can be removed with a simple brushing with a clean cotton cloth. The board is heavy, weighing in at about 15 kilograms. We would normally expect it to weigh slightly more if it was Katsura, so the board may be Matsu (pine) or some other wood.
Shipping Details:
FedEx International Priority shipping from Japan (to almost everywhere) is already included in the purchase price. This service reduces the shipping time to only 5 business days. Please allow up to 1 week for us to pack your order and complete the Customs forms, then you will receive a shipping notification from Shopify with your tracking number.
