Question from a novice

[PietroParis]

Dear Forum Members,

I have been fascinated for a while by some aspects of Japanese art (mainly shin hanga, more recently netsuke) but I am a complete novice for what concerns sword fittings. The only book I could find so far on this topic is Joe Earle's "Lethal Elegance" on the collection of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, and I will be grateful for any suggestion for further reading.

The reason why I am posting here is that recently I felt like buying a sukashi tsuba (for no special reason, other than I find the openwork decoration the most pleasing to my aesthetic sense), and after following a few non-specialized auctions of Asian art in Paris I ended up with this one:



I would greatly appreciate any insight on the origin and quality of my tsuba. Both the estimate and the price I eventually paid were on the (very) low side compared to what I see in antiques shops, thus I don't have particularly high hopes/expectations. The diameter is about 7.5cm and the thickness about 4mm. The auctioneer's description (my translation from French) was:

"Edo Period (1603-1868). Iron maru gata with maru bori openwork of flowers in their foliage. Unsigned".

I know by now what "maru gata" and "maru bori" mean. I presume that the dating should be taken with some skepticism (although other tsuba in the same sale were described as "Meiji Period", "20th century", and even "cast iron", i.e. there was at least an attempt to differentiate them). I made some searches online but I could not find any item with a similar design (I don't take this as a good sign...) If I understand correctly, the presence of sekigane and of tagane marks should indicate that the tsuba was once mounted on a sword, although of course they might also be spurious. Finally, I don't know how to interpret a small fissure (about 1cm long) near the back edge of the rim - see the third picture - but I have a bad feeling about it... Please let me know if I should post any other pictures to help in the identification of this tsuba.
 

Again, I will be very grateful for any comment by this forum's learned members, and I won't be devastated (but maybe a bit disappointed!) if it turns out that I bought a tourist piece...

 

Cheers, Pietro

[ROKUJURO]

Pietro,

bienvenue à bord et welcome to the NMB!

I am sure that your TSUBA is not at all a tourist piece, but a genuine one in NANBAN (or NAMBAN) style, perhaps HIZEN province. It is difficult to make a closer assessment concerning the age without seeing the TSUBA in hand, but EDO period seems to be safe. My personal feeling is mid- to late EDO. 

In terms of design I think I see foliage, birds, and dew drops. 

The fissure is a flaw which developed from the manufacture of the TSUBA and can be seen as proof that it is not a cast one. It looks like a welding fault that caught rust in it, thus opening up the tiny gap. It can be fixed by a professional restorer (Ford Hallam) in a way that it won't open more, but it cannot be made invisible. This flaw may influence the value a little, but it is not 'fatal' in my opinion.

If you should wish to stay with this form of Japanese arts and crafts, a whole world of fascinatiing and inspiring items and designs will open up for you! Have fun!

 

[PietroParis]

Hello Jean,

 

thanks so much for your welcoming words, and also for the reassuring news about the tsuba. In my searches I had indeed noticed some similarity with the nanban style, but I believed that the decoration of my tsuba was not "arabesque" enough to fit in the category. Clearly I have a lot to learn... I also agree with you that the "flowers" of the auctioneer's description could very well be birds. As to the fissure, I am quite sure that repairing it would cost more than I paid for the tsuba in the first place. I will just accept it as part of the life of the object (no big deal if it affects its value, I am not planning to resell it anyway).

 

This said, I will certainly keep learning from this forum and try to develop my taste and experience before embarking in new purchases. Thanks again for your kind help and Best Regards,

 

Pietro

[JohnTo]

Hi Pietro

Welcome to NMB and collecting tsuba.  Yours looks like Hizen work, which derived from chinese nanban/namban work, but nanban usually has an irregular patterned surface on the seppa dai and odd shaped nagako ana.

 

I'm not sure if this book is still in print, but The Peabody Collection of Japanese Sword Guards (ISBN 87577-041-X), 1975 is an excellent introduction to the different tsuba schools.  The other place to look for more info on tsuba is the Church collection at the Asmolean museum, Oxford ( http://jameelcentre.ashmolean.org/collection).  Hundreds of tsuba, well described (unlike many major museums)

 

Best regards, John

[PietroParis]

Hi John,

 

thanks a lot for your comments and also for the link to the Oxford/Ashmolean website, it looks really informative! It will take me a while to explore it in detail... For the rest, I'll check out the Peabody book, I suppose it can be found second-hand. Another book that was recommended to me is "Sukashi Tsuba" by M. Sasano (1972), which also can be found second-hand (although a bit on the pricey side). Finally, browsing around the forum I learned about this thesis on the namban style, downloadable from the Durham University website: http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/4129/

 

Cheers, Pietro

[PietroParis]

Hi All,

 

I am coming back to my very first thread from one year ago (time flies!) due to some new information that I chanced upon. Today I saw a tsuba on sale on eBay whose bird motif looks remarkably similar to mine (minus the plants):

 

 

The NTHK papers of the eBay tsuba – kindly translated by John "Shugyosha" in the relative section of the forum – describe the birds as wild geese, and attribute the tsuba to Akasaka Tadatoki. From a quick search it appears that there were several generations of Akasaka artists with that name, and I must say that none of the Tadatoki tsuba that I could find either in the forum or via a google image search bears any resemblance to this one. Anyway, assuming that the NTHK identification of the eBay tsuba as Akasaka is correct, do you think there are grounds to reconsider the "Hizen" identification of my own tsuba?

 

Cheers, Pietro

[Bugyotsuji]

A search for Bushu Akasaka Tadatoki in Japanese supports your position.

https://www.google.co.jp/search?q=鍔赤坂忠時&client=safari&hl=ja-jp&prmd=misvn&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjvqcyNqoHpAhUdyIsBHe_BCBIQ_AUoAnoECAoQAg&biw=414&bih=719&dpr=2

[PietroParis]

A search for Bushu Akasaka Tadatoki in Japanese supports your position.

 

I suppose you mean that it supports my puzzlement at the attribution of the eBay tsuba to Akasaka Tadatoki, right? Alas, if we discount that attribution, there is nothing to be learned about my own tsuba...

 

Cheers, Pietro

[Spartancrest]

Pietro

 

If you are interested mainly in sukashi guards there is always the old standby "Early Japanese Sword Guards Sukashi" by Masayuki Sasano you can find it on the net in many spots, this link is one but if you search you can get copies at cheaper prices. I bought a first edition from Japan recently for as little as $35.

https://www.abebooks.com/book-search/title/early-Japanese-sword-guards-sukashi/author/masayuki-sasano/

 

I would agree with John, the Church collection at the Asmolean museum, Oxford is a great store of information though some schools are a little thin. I did a book on this museum myself - turned into four volumes of over 1,000 pages, so you can see its well worth a look. This link takes you straight to the tsuba from the Church collection, but there are other tsuba in the Museum not from the Church collection if you search for them.

http://jameelcentre.ashmolean.org/collection/7/10237/10338

 

There is a wealth of information amongst the members of NMB on tsuba of all kinds and some book authors as well in the group (including myself)

 

There should also be a wealth of books in French available, I have translated a few into English, but they are no doubt better in the original language. Some old references like Louis Gonse's "L'art Japonais" 1883  and "The Catalogue of the Collection of Japanese Sword-guards" Louvre Museum, a gift of Mr. Tadamasa Hayashi (1894) and also "Chefs - D'oeuvre D'Art Japonais" by Gaston Migeon 1905. You can find these on-line as PDF's. They may be somewhat out of date but they are free and written at a time when tsuba study was "fresh".

A better book on the basics of tsuba schools than the Peaboby collection, I personally think is, "Japanese Sword Guards-Art of War" [Gary D. Murtha]

 

There should be a disclaimer with tsuba collecting - you can never stop at just one!

[Bugyotsuji]

Looking through the Japanese links I posted above I stumbled across a very similar tsuba to a Mumei one that I have, papered there to Tadatoki. Always learning something new.

[PietroParis]

Thanks for the book suggestions Dale, I will just point out that my original post dates back to April 2019...

I have bought two more tsuba in the meantime. A couple of months ago, when life was still normal, I also bought the Sasano for 50 EUR in a second-hand bookshop in Paris.

A question to all: what do you make of the attribution of the eBay tsuba linked above to a famous Akasaka lineage? Is it possible that the NTHK got it wrong?

Cheers, Pietro

[MauroP]

Hi Pietro,
the shape of seppa-dai and hitsu-ana are quite different in your tsuba compared to the other one. Just my uneducated opinion.

[Gunome]

Hello,

 

Hi Pietro,
the shape of seppa-dai and hitsu-ana are quite different in your tsuba compared to the other one. Just my uneducated opinion.

 

what Mauro said + the iron texture & carving style

[Gunome]

Hello Dale,

 

There should also be a wealth of books in French available, I have translated a few into English, but they are no doubt better in the original language. Some old references like Louis Gonse's "L'art Japonais" 1883  and "The Catalogue of the Collection of Japanese Sword-guards" Louvre Museum, a gift of Mr. Tadamasa Hayashi (1894) and also "Chefs - D'oeuvre D'Art Japonais" by Gaston Migeon 1905. You can find these on-line as PDF's. They may be somewhat out of date but they are free and written at a time when tsuba study was "fresh".

A better book on the basics of tsuba schools than the Peaboby collection, I personally think is, "Japanese Sword Guards-Art of War" [Gary D. Murtha]

 

By chance do you have the link of the PDF you are refering to ?

[PietroParis]

Hi Both,

 

the shape of seppa-dai and hitsu-ana are quite different in your tsuba compared to the other one. Just my uneducated opinion.

what Mauro said + the iron texture & carving style

 

To be clear, I was not implying that my tsuba is comparable in quality to the other one! Yet, for what concerns strictly the motif, this is by far the closest match I've seen in one year.

This said – leaving aside my own tsuba for the moment – I remain puzzled by the Akasaka attribution of the eBay tsuba. To my very uneducated eye, it does not resemble any other geese-themed Akasaka tsuba that I could find on the internet, see e.g. this search. Do you find that attribution plausible?

 

Cheers, Pietro

 

P.S. for what it's worth, I wonder if the seppa-dai of the eBay tsuba was modified to enlarge the hitsu-ana.

[Spartancrest]

Sebastien V. "The Catalogue of the Collection of Japanese Sword-guards" Louvre Museum, a gift of Mr. Tadamasa Hayashi (1894) the original french title is below  Catalogue de la Collection des gardes de sabre japonaises au Musée du Louvre : Don de M. Tadamasa Hayashi de Tôkiô

https://bibliotheque-numerique.inha.fr/collection/item/8745-catalogue-de-la-collection-des-gardes-de-sabre-japonaises-au-musee-du-louvre

 

Louis Gonse's "L'art Japonais" 1883

https://archive.org/details/lartjaponais02gons/page/n6/mode/2up

 

"Chefs - D'oeuvre D'Art Japonais" by Gaston Migeon 1905, I have lost it seems, though a translated version can be found with the other two French examples in my book "Early Articles for Tsuba Study 1880-1923 Enlarged Edition"

https://www.abebooks.com/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=30492380042&searchurl=sortby%3D17%26tn%3Dtsuba&cm_sp=snippet-_-srp1-_-image1

[Gunome]

Many thanks Dale !