Jesta

It’s all good, I’d rather know, and thanks for your offer.

Hi all. Thanks for the notes. To put this to rest… Matsunoki is right, or so I believe. I have run a couple of simple tests to see if it is silver or polished iron. I can’t find any evidence that it is silver, and when I rub the darker areas with a tissue they come away with iron rust colour, so I am going to assume that it is indeed iron. I have written to the auction house to complain that their description was inaccurate and asking for some action, no idea if they will respond with any except a form email, but we will see… I am sad, because it was a piece that I was quite excited about. It is not a cheap mistake, but I am somewhat sanguine about it. It’s still a piece that I like looking at, and learning is always valuable in the end.

Thanks for this. I can’t see the first one clearly, but I will check out the book.

Thanks. I was the bidder…

Interesting point, but I think that it is more likely that the artist wanted to leave the cross-hatching to keep the material-like texture, which I understand to be one of the ways to use this technique, much like nanako resembles silk (and something that I like). (see here for another example: https://japaneseswordbooksandtsuba.com/store/tsuba-kodogu/q784-higo-tsuba-hozon-to-kumagai/) The fact that the pattern covers the whole surface would indicate that the this wasn’t put there just to hold the the design in place. In your example, the technique has been used for exactly that, and only for the design, rather than for a material aesthetic.

This one has just arrived, and I am sharing my excitement… It is iron, and has some good nunome-zogan, using two different shades of gold, with the ground in what I think is silver. This one in the Ashmolean looks like similar work (https://jameelcentre.ashmolean.org/collection/921/per_page/50/offset/200/sort_by/date/category/other/start/1799/end/1895/object/21029), but doesn’t note a possible origin. Does anyone have any ideas where it might have come from?

I think that it is largely going to depend on your budget… I did see this one: https://www.aoijapan.com/tsuba-mumeiunsignedkaga-kinko-nbthk-hozon-tosogu/ Or this one: https://www.zacke.at/auction/lot/58-a-fine-silvered-iron-tsuba-with-autumnal-flowers/?lot=75950&sd=1# (I bought this one, waiting for it to arrive)

Very pretty. Are you looking for theme, or to match the crafting type, or both?

More information on the battle of Uji here https://www.militaria.co.za/nmb/topic/51989-race-across-the-uji-river-1180-tsuba-and-fuchi-kashira/

Raise to $190

Then, I will go to $160

$140…

Yeah… that’s what I did when I saw it. It felt off, so a reverse search and so many examples come up. I am very surprised that an auction house like Christies would allow this sort of crap to go on sale. Again, a little bit of research would show that it’s at the very least suspicious enough to pull…

Thanks… I was just doing a reverse image search, and came across one of the discussions… I came on here to edit my post The one for sale now at Christies looks almost identical to the one Dale posted, it may even be the same one…

What do you all think of this one: https://onlineonly.christies.com/s/art-asia/soft-metal-inlaid-metal-tsuba-shoki-652/260894?ldp_breadcrumb=back It is a design that seems to come up a lot, both Bonhams and Christies have sold (or are selling) tsuba with this exact design. Looks fairly suss to me…