Antique(?) Tsuba Find - Genuine? Worth? Preservation!

[timothyhunter55]

Hi!

Whilst clearing out the loft recently I came across my old tsuba which I have had for many years and was given to me by my father. I believe he owned it for many many years as well.

I would like to know (if it is possible to tell from photos) if it is genuine, if it is worth anything (I'm not selling, just for peace of mind or insurance) and how best to preserve it. It's been wrapped in paper with a silica gel packet and stored in a plastic zip bag for as long as I have owned it. It looks in good condition aside from the gold leaf mostly missing. Both myself and my father only handled it with gloves. I have no documents with it.

I was thinking of wall mounting it in a glass-fronted frame, is this advisable?

For the preservation of iron, I mainly use ACF-50 (on Land Rovers and motorcycles) Would this work on tsuba if gently applied or would it affect the gold leaf?

It would also be great if anyone could provide some information about the tsuba, even a date range I can start to research into.

I can provide more information, close-ups or alternative angles if required.

Many thanks in advance for any information

Tim

[FlorianB]

Nakago-ana obviously not correctly placed in the middle, hitsu-ana in a most unusual form, a scratched outline of a kogai-hitsu-ana, surface roughly raked, crude ornamentation - I’m afraid even if it should be Japanese (I rather think probably chinese) origin it’s poorly done and at least worthless.

Sorry,
Florian

[vajo]

Looks Japanese for me. The surfsce is typical for thin gold and silver layers for plating. The Tsuba looks like home made (not unusal). Oil it with choji oil and a smooth cotton towel, dont rub it. It has less or no worth for a collector. But it is good for your idea of decoration.

[rkg]

I'd say its the real deal - you can see seppa wear on the front, the nakago ana adjustments look right, you see crosshatching like this for nunome installaton that they sometimes had no intentioni to close up where the inlay wasn't, etc. 

whether its valuable is a different question.  I'd say not particularly, but if its been in the family it has other value, so...

I don't recognize the group, but I've been sleep deprived lately, so that might be expected :-/

 

Preservation of iron is a touchy subject with tsuba - there are whole camps arguing about whether to oil/wax/what (if anything) to do about "bad" rust, etc.  I'd probably start out reading Jim Gilbert's diatribe on this:

 

http://home.earthlink.net/~jggilbert/Cleaning.htm

 

Enjoy studying it :-)

Best,

rkg

(Richard George)