Spartancrest

I found two hand drawn images of Ruyi menuki in the Metropolitan Museums collection from "Album of Designs for Metal Carving (Chōsen Gafu)" by Ranzan Tsuneyuki [mid 19th century]

Mothers club meeting - my baby is not ugly but yours is! [sorry for the sexist bit] Please just get over it, opinions should always be welcome - you don't need to agree however. [getting shot down in flames makes me take a closer look the next time I comment, which is not a bad thing.]

Apologies, it is the lighting - has the box been used for another set of menuki? I have seen many menuki pairs that are not the same size. Even those depicting the same object.

I have to make a coment on the voracity of museum descriptions and how we should not blindly follow their interpretations. The McLean Museum and Art Gallery - Interclyde council [Scotland], has a rather unusual tsuba in its collection. "The tsuba is in the form of a rack holding a Japanese robe and hat, in gilded relief. There is gilding on both faces. Inscription one face. Signed: Shigeyoshi Umetada." [1981.134] The Powerhouse/Museum of Applied Arts [Australia] has this as the ura side of a guard. The description has this "The reverse of the tsuba has a relief of a shirt on a hanging implement." [A5308-101] The final image will give you a clue as to what both guards are in fact representing. A childs balance toy. What is more damning of the description by the Powerhouse museum, is the fact that two toys are represented on the omote side.

Yas, you have the English translation off again, Google translate [not that it is accurate] Hiroyoshi Tsu (1721-1762) A sword metalworker in the middle of the Edo period. Born in Kyoho (kiyou-ho) 6 years. Awa Tokushima (Awa Tokushima) Clan's master of Nomura Masamichi (Nomura Masamichi). He is said to be the best craftsman in the Nomura school. He decorated with flowers and birds, rims of botanical drawings, petite, scales, etc. Horeki (hou-reki) died in June 2012. 42 years old. Born in Edo. Known as Hachizaemon. Research book: Shigeru Kajimura, "Tsuhirogo", 1966, self-published

I notice there is a shadow in the fabric under the gold flower that doesn't match the present menuki and the colour of the gold looks different to that on the Ruyi so my guess is they are a mismatch pair. Steve I think the description by aoijapan is accurate but 'brush' is certainly not right and a hossu is more of a whisk. The translation I see as Nyo /Nyoi should read as Ruyi [ Probably a Google Translate mistake] Brian I am amazed how good the work on that guard is, from the hairs in his beard to the wrinkles on his face. It is a pity the " Lady/goddess? " face is a little rubbed or oxidized on the ura. Does anyone think the design is reminiscent of an Egyptian Pharaoh?

Thank you very much for that information Steve. One mystery solved. They do make some excellent castings, in fact at times too good!

I have been studing these cast reproductions for some time and untill now had no clue as to who made them. This one comes with the original [I hope!] box, any help in what the box says would be appreciated.

Yes a Ruyi, a septre used by Chinese scholars, I have seen a few on Japanese action sites, they appear on tsuba rarely as well. The tsuba pictured is found in the Metropolitan Museum number 29.100.989

I see a few cast pieces and modern reproductions being posted, Daruma in his cave comes in lots of fake patina colours. As does the 'Tosa Miochin'

Just an update on these Serpentine/Rain Dragon designs, I have found evidence of at least one rather obvious Iron casting of the design - there is no evident Izarae [cleaning a casting] Even for a casting there should have been some sort of 'quality control' - The asking price is way off the scale. I will leave it up to the viewer to find the faults - many.

I think the lack of inlay gives it a tooled leather look that is not unattractive. The motifs are very well done with no real damage - do we even know if there was extra inlay?

I have a guard [fairly ordinary] with the same cloud formation - this time over Fuji. The papered example shown, has two - possible three points of contact within the 'cloud', whilst the 'thunderstorm' example has only one. My Fuji example has three points of contact as does the more elaborately decorated example. I don't have any information of attribution on my examples. I would suspect there is a lot of 'cross-over' from school to school. I find the inlay work on the kaku-maru sukashi a bit distracting and unnecessary.

Just a picture save before it is lost, of the poor casting from post [ 6/08/2020 ] The seller was wanting 30,000 yen. You will notice there is no oni and the area otherwise undecorated in all the other examples has had a pine tree put in, Shoki has lost his applied face entirely.

Thank you so much Colin, I found your post [seems a bit more difficult since the changes] I do recall there was another example that had a round hole cut in it as well but I can't track that down as yet. As a bit of fun you could always set a small diamond in your Dragon - it would look like he was crying? 😂 Real Samurai bling! I must say I love the patina on your guard.

Yuk! Keep that parasitic fungus away from me!🤮

Yes the size of the eyes give it away - Cicada just before it transforms to the winged stage. They can drive you mad with the noise here, in an Australian Summer! We have Mole Crickets here as well. There are dozens of species of Cicada, perhaps their life cycle is what the design is alluding to?

Greg I have three iron daisho on record, iron examples tend to be in the minority, of the 34 I have, only 12 are in iron and of these, six make up the three daisho. One surprising thing is some of the smaller guards (sho) are not signed, so they may have been cobbled together. Particularly the two from "The Japanese Sword & its Fittings", Cooper Union Museum N.Y. 1966. The design does not match. [these pictured are both signed by the same artist]

I did a rework of the oeder collection a few years back [2017], translated the German text into English and showed every illustrated guard, all descriptions are translated into English, as well there is a collection of tsuba taken from the world travel collection of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria [who was assassinated sparking the first world war] The book is 100 Pages. "Japanese Sword guards, Decoration and ornament in the collection of Georg Oeder of Dusseldorf 1916" https://www.amazon.com.au/Japanese-Decoration-ornament-collection-Dusseldorf/dp/1364114488 https://www.dymocks.com.au/book/Japanese-sword-guards-and-decoration-and-ornament-in-the-collection-of-georg-oeder-of-dusseldorf-1916-by-d-r-raisbeck-9781364114480 https://www.abebooks.com/9781389339271/Japanese-Sword-guards-Decoration-ornament-1389339270/plp There is a critique by tsubakansho Posted on November 14, 2019 https://tsubakansho.com/2019/11/14/Japanese-sword-guards-decoration-and-ornament-in-the-collection-of-georg-oeder-of-dusseldorf-1916/ The Georg Oeder collection was lost in 1945 when the Russians took Berlin -

A little off subject but in the same vein of tsuba themselves being used as a weapon. I have just found a Japanese site that claims some tsuba were designed as sword breakers? https://nihontou.jp/choice03/tousougu/tuba/717/00.htm I had thought this pattern represented a snow flake, but this site claims: "A deformed collar shaped like a youkai that appears in manga. It's not just a design, it's meant to fold the opponent's blade with a dent and fold it, or to sharpen the blade, so the originator can be said to be a great warrior. It is a piece that you should carefully keep to remove the convex rust and keep it carefully as a good material for the actual stadium. Not only artistic design value, but also a valuable material of Tsuba as a weapon." The translation is as usual poor, but the notches do look like those on a European swordbreaker .- the catch being that if you did happen to snag a blade edge you would probably have no fingers left with which to hold your own sword!

Thanks so much Greg, I must admit I have had the image of your guard for a few years now. Out of interest did you pay the asking price? The other examples I have not seen before. At the moment I have over thirty examples as a data base [ four examples of my own ], Although they are all the same general design there are a few anomalies I have found. You will notice one of the curls on this example goes in the opposite direction to almost all other examples [I have found only two like this]. The 'mane' is sometimes thinner and the stalk of the eye ball can stick out at a different angle. A lot are signed Toshimasa but some are signed by other smiths and a number are mumei.

I read a post some time back dealing with a tsuba that had a hole drilled through the 'jaw' of a rain-dragon or serpentine-dragon, I was hoping someone could steer me in the right direction? The pictures below are of the type I am looking for - Also if anyone has pictures of the same style they could donate, it would be much appreciated. Thank you. I have noticed that a lot of past posts with links to eBay and others are no longer found because the sites remove them from their data base, I think when linking such sites a copy of the picture should be posted as well, so the link information is not totally lost. It is no effort to 'print screen' and paste to the post.

Thanks Brian, I think I will try making some jam this season too!💡

Richard, yes they are Chinese lantern plants [Physalis alkekengi] They belong to the nightshade family, the bright red fruit is edible and very high in vitamin C - However the rest of the plant is toxic. They are related to the Cape Gooseberry [Physalis peruviana] which are almost identical except for the golden yellow colour of the ripe fruit. I have grown Cape gooseberry for years and can testify they are very good eating - they grow prolifically and set seed very easy - full sun in good soil they form a low bush and are an annual in temperate regions and a perennial in the tropics. If you haven't tried one you should grow one just for fun. I wonder why they were used as decoration on a sword-guard? Was it as a food plant or because they do look like tiny Chinese paper lanterns? I should note the example of the first post from Natura/BUY describes the design as Aoi flowers which is clearly wrong.

Several months ago I released a two volume book "Public Domain Tsuba in the Metropolitan Museum" - within that book there is an unusual example of a Kawari-gata guard that appeared to have originally had a maru rim, now removed. I have just come across the full example for comparison. You can clearly see they are the same design and the 85mm example has a fairly robust rim [mimi]. The Museums example though decorative would be impractical for use, the finer elements being easily cut off and a risk of catching on any lose clothing.