Assistance requested. I am a professor at midwestern university. This last semester in talking with another faculty member, they mentioned that the university had this rather large collection of tsuba. Now I happen to be an American Bladesmith Society Master Smith. The idea of looking at a collection of old tsuba was captivating. I asked the curator and they scheduled a time for me to see the collection. A family in the local community made the donation of the tsuba after the original collector died. When I arrived I was shown a very nice wooden box with four drawers. In each of the drawers is 30 or 50 tsuba. Each are kept in what appears to be a silk sleeve. With each tsuba is a card that identifies information on the origin of the tsuba. The earliest example is identified as belonging to the 14th century. These tsuba have never been photographed or truly catalogued. The person who collected them was assigned to Japan after WWII and lived there for a time. There are also notes on each tsuba beyond the cards that he kept (I have not seen these). Carefully, with protective gloves on I had the opportunity to sit and briefly look at each one. Many have gold and silver inlay. These are not the highly cut out tsuba but are pieces of a particular style (at least most are solid pieces with the sword cutout and half round cutouts.
I would like to see the tsuba photographed and their value assessed. While the collection is not under my authority, I was hoping to gather some information and send it over to the curator. While I am not a collector, I do know artistry and some, if not all, of these pieces are astounding.
Thanks,
Dan L. Petersen, Ph.D.
