Tosho Tsuba; Junk Or Gem?

[JohnTo]

I’d like to present this tosho tsuba for comments.  It is a small (7.0 cm height, 7.0 cm width, 0.3cm thick), sukashi tsuba, probably depicting a flower with six petals, the centre of each being removed.  The piercings on one of the middle petals has been widened (maybe at a later date), presumably to accommodate a kodzuka.  The plate is flat and slightly pitted, I think after burning in a forge rather than rusting (pitting is too even and lack rust scabs), or hammering (indentations look too small) and has a black (rather than brown) patina, worn in places to show the bare iron.  The seppa dai is a long oval shape and the nagako ana  looks too long in relation to the size of the tsuba.  The size of the nagako ana relative to the tsuba looks wrong for a katana, perhaps it was used with a wide bladed tanto.  There are three areas of shallow punch marks around the nagako ana rather than the heavy bashing seen on many early tsuba.

The initial impression that this tsuba gives is one of something that a village blacksmith knocked out during his lunch break, anytime during the past 150-450 years and it has little artistic merit.  However, there are a couple of features that may give it some historical value.  Firstly, looking at the edges of the piercings there are signs of delamination of the iron showing it was possibly fold forged or welded from iron plates of different hardness.  Secondly, there is the provenance.  This tsuba was bought as part of a bag of 19 loose tsuba of mixed quality (all rattling together in the auction. Ugh!), being part of the remnants of the stock of an oriental antique dealer who died 30 years ago (Albert Newall, 1920-1989).  There also appears to be traces of an old collectors number (70) on the seppa dai.  So, it looks like at least two previous western collectors attached some value to this tsuba.

I have only found a couple of tsuba with similar designs.  The Church Collection at the Ashmolean museum (EAX.10010) tsuba has a similar 6 petal design, but the edges are rounded, ryu hitsu have been incorporated, the tsuba is much bigger (9 cm) and described as Heianjo, 17^th C.  The British Museum have one with six cherry blossom shaped petals (1613-93, illustrated in their Swords of the Samurai catalogue, plate 96) also forged with rounded edges and attributed to Nishigaki Kanshiro.  My tsuba is crude in comparison with these.

Best regards, John

(just a guy making observations, asking questions, trying to learn)

[ChrisW]

I don't really know much of anything about tsuba as an art, but even in its utilitarian state there is a great deal of artistic merit I think. A gem worth saving. Though it'd require a lot of work to bring back to life if possible, it looks pretty close to a relic state to me.

[Ted Tenold]

...

[Stephen]

+1

[Curran]

R.I.P.

[Pete Klein]

[Jussi Ekholm]

I'm not a tsuba guy but I do not think of Tōshō when I look at it.

[ROKUJURO]

John,

my opinion is that it is a legit TSUBA in an advanced state of corrosion which does not allow an assessment of the former quality of the work. It was probably never a TOSHO TSUBA. The fact that the rust penetrated into the layers does not mean that there were different materials (hardness) combined; it was just a normal technique to homogenize the otherwise raw iron (TAMAHAGANE of low carbon content or some scrap iron pieces of the forge). 

TSUBA were generally not made by some village smiths (and certainly not in a lunch break), but by experts, be that swordsmiths or armour smiths. In later times, iron TSUBA were forged by smiths who specialized in that field.

I could not make a safe guess about the age, but my impression is that it could be from the early EDO JIDAI but it had a difficult life.

The center of the TSUBA is the SEPPA DAI where the NAKAGO (not nagako) goes through.