Steves87

I have been collecting all sorts of things for most of my life and for a while, I have been throwing loose bids at local auction houses here in West Aus. Sometimes I might win a specific item, and not realising at the time, the auction lot is much larger and contains many other things. I often re-sell some of these items, but occasionally there are some I keep for myself. Somewhat recently, I returned to university study for a career change. As the study was curation based, I became very familiar with contemporary collections (especially the digital side of collection institutions) and as part of my personal professional development, I decided to make use of my new knowledge. Initially I created a personal Instagram account for fun, which I eventually converted to a professional account to test the algorithms for certain uni subjects. After completing my degree, I decided to make use of the website building subjects that I took, to form a gallery of my collections which runs alongside the Instagram account. Backstory done, this is the link to the beta website I am in the middle of creating for my ongoing professional development https://rollingbrook...rollingbrooksgallery . My main reason for posting this today, is to study some of the analytical data I will get from the visits, as such, you may also see this pop up on facebook at a later point, too. Go easy on me, I am not always one to share my babies and it is still a work in progress (with mobile optimisation ongoing but should be ok). I need to basically re-photograph everything again (for consistency), and I also need to write up a lot of the info for a lot of objects, but the Tsuba related stuff is the most complete of the lot.

And one mine!

And another of my favourites

I keep seeing great Tsuba and each one reminds ne of another. Here are a couple of similar ones.

Sakura clusters

This is one of the best threads in a while.... here is another of my favourites

Another I'm quite fond of

So many to choose from!

That is a good question and I have always just thought "it is wrecked", but, thinking about it, you could locally flatten the area and start again... it will make a depression of sorts, but it has got to be cheaper than starting again. In no way would I say this is something you can do on a high end item, but something like Nagoya Mono would probably handle it... see the circled area of an image I got from the below link, flattening out nanako to remedy a miss-placed strike would create a waving nanako base as seen.

Of course!

To save some digital space, here are another 4 wild things in a collage!

Nice owl guard Dan! You don't see many owls'. Here is my example:

I love that Geraint, very different! I have a similar style Namban/Hizen guard which is not quite as interesting as yours, but I still love. The tendrils are different to the usual Namban style, and I note that they are most often seen on guards classified as Hizen.

Another horse!

Lesser Cuckoo

Have we had a wind chime yet? https://www.ebay.com...r=artemis&media=COPY

This is all very interesting. For Australia, you don't really have any troubles in any state (except Victoria) for swords or sword related things, until the value exceeds 1000aud. Once that limit is exceeded, automatic GST is not taken out, and it has to go through a customs evaluation. Where the tricky stuff comes in, is in what the item is described as. Weapons, antiques, art, furniture, fittings, and "parts" all have different meanings to different assesors, AND importantly, different rates of tax! I still have not looked into it 100% but it seems that antiques are exempt or have lower tariffs, but art does not.... so, "antique art" then causes an issue for the assessor. I have spent considerable time on the phone to customs regarding the items and their classifications. One time they asked me to provide referenced evidence for a package of three Tsuba, I did and I paid the lower fees (very helpful assessor), but also, I worked out it would have been cheaper to pay three lots of postage than the combined postage and customs/tax/quarantine fees!!

I thought it looked familiar! Dale is every bit the grandmaster when it comes to this stuff! Here is a screen shot of the likely similar original Tsuba style from Dale's linked thread (for ease of viewing)

This guard has likely been cut down from within a mimi-rim. I would bet @Spartancrest has an example of a non-cut down guard.

Yes this is true, there are a few techniques that go for a wrist strike (that i know about). We used to do full contact sparring with shinai (kenjutsu, not Kendo), and one trick was swapping the tsuba out for extra large Tsuba (3d printed) incase these moves were done. It worked, but the solid plastic Tsuba only lasted a couple of hits before it snapped on mis-judged strikes/blocks. The wrist hits generally were not heavy enough to break the guard, but they did stop the shinai.

There are quite a lot of thick guards out there, this one is not as thick as the example you have, but it is able to stand upright on the face of the mimi. I believe this represents a Mon, but I couldn't tell you which one, off the top of my head.

I agree with Jay, I have a feeling only steel is 3d printed at this point; however, wax can be 3d printed for casting brass (lost wax casting), so this is very possible in this case https://www.zeal3dprinting.com.au/brass-3d-printing/#:~:text=The lost-wax casting method,in the final product design.

On a slight bend of the topic, that first yoshiro mon Tsuba is the first I have seen where a mon has a (Kiri?) Stalk.

Thanks Geraint (and Chris), believe it or not, but that is actually still very helpful. It is good to know that the re-patination is basically un-aided and relatively speaking, quite fast... When you consider that this also happens in what I would call a "stored" state, it bodes well for other examples in a state of despair.

Great post Geraint, Can you please shed some light on the storage conditions you had this guard in? Maybe something like: (Almost) exact timeframe. In/out box. If out of box, mounted or display. If out of box (mounted or display), location in house... eg, near living/kitchen/bathroom/laundry rooms (for light/humidity/temps)... cupboard/drawer with approx frequency of opening. It would be good to get an indication of these also for preventative conservations sake.