Curran

Is that an ivory piece around the koiguchi? If so, export/import means the ivory comes off, no?

@KungFooey glad someone else noticed this tsuka. As an aside: In addition to the kashira, the menuki are Goto style Sambaso dancers. Without looking closer, I couldn't say Goto or what generation.

Thank you for posting this, and your thoughts on Niten koshirae. We all come at this from many different angles, and sometimes your posts make me reconsider what little I feel I know. I'd seen the Suaka snails recently. Small steps forward in understanding, with a Eureka! moment every now and then.

Mods- this can be moved to the SOLD section.

--SOLD-- @Deiro NMB has been around a long time. There are 15-20 years of that sort of discussion in the Tosogu section. Query similar tsuba and terms and explore. Even I sometimes forget how much knowledge is buried in there.

Yeah... It is ON HOLD. Probably gone. Two inquires in the first hour.

Last one. These are all deemed large for NMB, so stopping here.

And more pics.

More pics

$595. After an online discussion with a friend last night, I decided to offer up one of my Hayashi Plum Tree tsuba towards paying down the Juyo tsuba previously discussed. Size: 78mm x 75.7mm x 5.6mm (taper to 5 at mimi). --For me, this is a favorite design. If interested, please PM and ask questions. Located in SouthEast USA.

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.