Curran

I confess that I misunderstood this theme for the longest time. The gourd and catfish menuki are often associated with Higo koshirae, but I don't remember it on to many tsuba other than the Miyamoto Musashi one. Personally, I love the M. Musashi design of Catfish n Gourd. I think it was on the front of one of the DTI catalogs one year.

Pretty much. Referencing some Christies Auctions, I've seen tsuba go for $80,000+ when I would have hesitated to pay $800 for them. Sometimes just for something that happened to photograph nicely. I once was consulted on a koshirae at Bonhams. I thought it worth $35k-$40k, with opening bid somewhere in the $20k range. The wealthy foreign buyer seeking the consultation went on to pay over $200,000 for it. These are amounts that make us go "whoa", but the billionaires don't care.

Feels right. Nice little menuki. The attached gold Kirin menuki were mine. Note the similar spiral sunburst carved patterns. NBTHK said these were Yanagawa. NBTHK mostly got it right. Near miss.... Darcy and I later established they were identical to a Kikuoka school pair that was in a Juyo set mitsukoromono.

Hamano Noriyuki. Looks more like the father's signature. Haynes 07454.0 Decent looking signature, which I would say >50% chance to pass --but it has got some quirks. --- And, as the Haynes Index says, "there are many forgeries of both generations". Not sure papers would add much value. Kinko works do seem more popular than in the past.

Nowadays, please expect to wait 1 year from the time you mail it to the time it returns. Maybe 6 months if you are very lucky. The new NBTHK reservation system is making many agents pull out their hair. Some might claim otherwise, but the process is a lot long, more expensive, and less educational than it once was. You might do best to show it here to see if it is worth papering.

Counterparty risk. It is surprising that even Japanese seller muck this up a lot. Even my own agent did this one time recently.

Just -wow-. Hell of an acquisition. Glad it is in the States, though on the wrong side of the US.

Too many Good_Men_Gone in that thread. Even Arnold_F, who I often disagreed with on most everything economic or tosogu.

I am joining this thread a little late. Chrysanthemums have been a theme I have enjoyed over the years. Had quite a few of all types. Some very valuable (Hikozo). Some not so expensive. My favorite iron 16 petal iron chrysanthemum tsuba. Not easy to tell, but this one is a bit concave.

Ooh-la-la Nice. I have a similar 1500s shakudo one, presumably for uchigatana. I love these with the earlier hitsu ana.

That would be the "Hoan" group. Not Ono. Someone in there pissed off the wrong person. One version was that he spat on someone that he shouldn't, but since one version of "tsuba" can also mean "spit" (唾) [different kanji than our sword hand guards] .... maybe that is just garbage goballygook that someone mistranslated in some way. Just FYI.... if you are in Japan hanging out and tell someone in Japanese that "tsuba" are your hobby, you might get some confused looks.

Just taking the owner at his word that it is Ono. Though very rare, there are signed Saotome. Some of those signed Saotome look very different than tsuba we normally think of as Saotome. Allowing that there might be signed Ono that defy convention, I asked the correct reading of the signature so I could look it up. Hopefully tonight or tomorrow. ________________________________________________ Edit: As coincidence would have it, I have a copy of Art & Sword Vol 3 beside my desk. Opening it up, on page 5 it discusses several Ono artist signatures. One of them is "Bishu (Ono) ju Fukunari". To my eyes, the (Fuku) character looks similar to the one on Chris' tsuba. The (shige) character can also be read (nari)- though I agree with @hobnails that I would have translated it as (shige). I will look into this a bit more tonight or tomorrow. Chris' tsuba might be a rare signed Ono tsuba, but I have no idea what time period this Bishu Ono ju Fukunari worked. Maybe he worked in the 1800s, whereas many of the Ono we talk about seem to be 1600s and 1700s works. Curran

Guido's collection was being broken up and sold by someone in Europe. Though Guido and I were not the closest of buds, I respected him a good deal and enjoyed some of our interactions. His wry sense of humor was an important part of the boardwalk that is NMB. His death has never been confirmed to me, but he isn't coming back to us. I've been low level angry about it in not feeling I was ever able to adequately pay my respects to his memory. Darcy and Ford have their place in the NMB pantheon, and I always felt Guido deserved his own little corner too. That is hard to do given how he went away at a time of transition (his moving Japan to Germany) and tumult (tail end of the Pandemic), yet it was never confirmed that he was truly gone.

Perhaps the French aren't allowed to see British news. A Napoleonic vestige? Also, I love that the "Most read in UK" is about a hotdog.

Brutally good bargain. Nicely signed set.

https://www.express....h-ancient-sword-kent There. Did I manage to post this before crazyBig did? Now I can cross "post-a-cool-or-interesting-sword-related-news-story-before-BIG" off my bucket list. [Not meant to offend BIG. Just having end of year fun. Kinda been an odd one, and wanna laugh at the end for having gotten through it a-okay.]

Thank you for posting this one. I don't remember it from before. What is the signature on the left: Shita___ + _____(shige or suke)?

There are some great ones in there. I recognize one or two of Jim Gilbert's. Thank you for sharing. As you know, my thoughts on Ono tsuba have been back n forth over the years. Sometimes the NBTHK seems as uncertain as I am. Others are sharing some really nice ones in this thread.

Good. This one was too tempting in a time of other holiday expenses. Germany keeps getting a lot of my Tosogu-Koshirae money these days. Lots of excellent collections and collectors there.

Nope. Jim G. offered me his Water Wheel a long time ago, and I had to decline at the time. I regretted it for many years. Got the chance to fix it later, and jumped on the ones above. Left one is a bit bigger and thicker than the right one. Knotty tekkotsu and wet [yakkite] type patina on both. I think the smaller one on the right is the one that is a bit more tekkotsu gnarly. Ono is treated as a dumping bin by the NBTHK, thus you see some boring pieces and some great pieces with the same NBTHK attribution. I thought I had my One-n-Done [Tokugawa mon] Ono tsuba, but I couldn't resist these last year after a decade or more regretting not buying Jim Gilbert's. No idea to whom he sold his Ono.

Just killing time while cooking dinner. This is an Ono Daisho [NBTHK Hozon] that I had fitted recently. If you have time, please share your own Ono. Yoko Ono not welcome. Not inebriated. I'm just a bit bored before dinner.

As Mauro posted, -this was a good one waaay before I understood. Wish I had the knowledge to buy it back then, though I have never found that particular dealer very easy to deal with. Steve W. pretty much nails it to the wall, having communicated far better and more than I could have on the particular tsuba in question. Yours is a nice tsuba and has a decidedly nidai design to it, but it doesn't feel like a nidai work. I thought it might be a Futagoya(ma) school utsushi tsuba, as I have seen some convincing utsushi (hommage) pieces by the school and own one that is signed "Yamakichibei" but attributed to nidai Norisuke (NBTHK Hozon). Through good fortune, the NBTHK has the original Norisuke sketchbooks and tsuba rubbings. There are a few excellent Yamakichibei utsushi in there. The Norisuke works are well regarded and collected. They were employed by the Tokugawa and often tasked with making 19th century hommage pieces or copies of famous or coveted works owned by the Tokugawa.

These are "Hazama" tsuba using the exotic sahari inlay (silver, lead, tin, etc mix- possibly using mercury in the process) that is incredibly hard and possibly toxic in the manufacturing process. Ford said he could do it, but I would say it is one of the times where his bravado got ahead of him. His sahari inlay did not convince me at all. It looked very modern to my eyes. Sahari was also used to inlay gun barrels, as it won't suffer from the heat. Sometimes Hazama (and closely related Kunitomo) tsuba are referred to or known as "gun-maker" tsuba and enjoy a little panache in Japan for that reason. The orange lighting from above doesn't help. Having seen at least 100 of these and owned 4 or 5, I can look past the odd lighting and properly imagine what they look like. For Hazama, the designs are on the dramatic side. I'm not saying I'd want to own either, but the inlay and use of sahari on the Taiko drum Hazama is relatively impressive. I doubt the ropes are sahari. They are probably another much softer metal, like silver. Very unique tsuba, but I'd 100x more prefer to have the skull Nobuiye.

Thank you. It is the first time that I have seen those in color.

Some respondents here and on Facebook. Tsuba ON HOLD pending payment. Thanks for looking. This was intended as a holiday gift, sharing out a bit of good fortune recently had with one coming in. I hope the new owner enjoys it.