Any Info On Symbology Of This Common Design Tsuba?

[ggil]

Mine is the first one pictured. The second one pictured is priced at 10 times what I paid (wtf)! The last one is Chinese garbage (no offense to the good Chinese people, but it looks like a angry bird cartoon character). Plase help with any info regarding symbology or just anything really regarding the tauba design or the piece itself. Thanks so much our good people for the help!

 

-Grant

[ROKUJURO]

Grant,

while sparrows are usually linked with bamboo, the scene might be of a hawk looking for a meal.

In the internet I found a description of a HASEGAWA TOHAKU painting of that same theme, a few lines of which I have copied:   
 

.......If you are a sparrow or a mouse, what could be more frightening than the shadow of a hawk or a falcon hunting overhead? Even a hawk sitting on a branch attracts crows and jays, which try to scare it away from their families and their nests. Hawks, falcons, and eagles are powerful birds.

 

Many Japanese artists of the Edo period created their works for powerful men — the wealthy and mighty nobility and warriors who ruled Japan. These men saw themselves in the hawk’s ruthless strength. Some warriors trained falcons as hunting birds or kept them as symbols of military might. They avidly collected Chinese paintings of hawks to decorate their homes.......

Maybe that is of some interest to you.

[ggil]

Thanks very much Jean! Definatly interesting info!

[kissakai]

Must be my lucky day

Two tsuba posts relevant to some of my tsuba

This mine

 

 

I looked in Legends in Japanese art (Joly) and on the internet and found nothing

I can all the details from this post to my records

 

 

Thanks

[Guido]

My guess: the Japanese proverb taka no mae no suzume 鷹の前の雀 (sparrow/s in front of a hawk). It has basically the same meaning as neko no mae no nezumi 猫の前の鼠 (mouse/mice in front of a cat) and hebi ni mikomareta kaeru 蛇に見込まれた蛙 (a frog being picked out by a snake). I explained the latter in a for sale post recently.

[christianmalterre]

once upon a time 2 wise men told me the same...

 

the one was Michael Hagenbusch-

the second was Christian Deydier-

 

both did say- as soon there is a slightest interest into something special....it does get reproduced, either by copy, or by intended fake.

 

so what?

 

i do not wonder at all - this is a very common to ben seen stilism!....typical late Edo to Showa taste of these times collectors.

 

Christian

[ggil]

Arrived on Saturday... very happy with this one, as I spent a lot of time drawing/painting birds of prey so appreciate art depicting them. Also tsuba with animals is appealing to my tastes, or lack thereof! It has been recently screwed up by someone filing the Ana down to bare, and now the nakago Ana is pretty big for the small tsuba...

[Stephen]

One of the Nicer ones Grant, well done.