Within Kyoto, from the late period into the early period, swordsmithing took root before the named Yamashiro lineages had fully separated. The place the work designated Ko-Kyōmono (古京物, "old Kyō work") at that root, naming the milieu it shares with the group of Munechika and Yoshiie, the Gojō group of Kanenaga and Kuninaga, and the early smiths Kunitomo, Hisakuni, and Kuniyasu, with Kunikiyo, Arikuni, and Kunitsuna also recorded among them. The blades themselves are , the particular school and individual hand declared indeterminable, so the attribution gathers the early Kyoto workshops as one antique body of Yamashiro- rather than assigning a name.
The shared vocabulary is consistent across the corpus. The is slender, with a marked taper from to , high with pronounced , the tip settling into a slight droop and closing in a , a form the records say does not descend later than the early period. The is a tightly forged mixed with , carrying thickly applied fine , , and a that stands against bright steel, though one shows a larger with that tends toward . The is a narrow with a shallow tendency and a small admixture of , in , into which and enter. Along the edge appear , uchi-noke, , a sanjūba-like impression, , and slight , with and running fine and delicate through the hardened area. The runs or shallow , becoming toward the point and turning back in a manner. Recognition rests on this archaic, courtly tone, the tewanioi-buri form joined to a quiet of small activities.
The frame these features as the chief points of appreciation in Yamashiro work: a graceful shape, exquisitely wrought , and a well-ordered . Read against the later schools, Ko-Kyōmono stands at the source from which , Gojō, and differentiated, retaining the tang and of the oldest courtly . One , though and , carries a Kōtsune of Tenna 2 (1682) attributing it to Gojō Kanenaga and a recording its shortening by Nobutaka of Owari in Hōreki 4 (1754); it passed through the Watanabe family of Watanabe Hanzō, the " Hanzō" who served Tokugawa Ieyasu. Where a single hand cannot be fixed, the register settles on the antiquity and high-bred refinement these blades hold in common as old Kyoto work.