tsuba with 3 family mon

[Kurikata]

Hi,

 

I submit to you, today, a sentoku moko gata tsuba with 3 different mon. After several research on the net, those mon are:

 

- GO-San kiri (Five/three powlonia) --> Ashikaga clan

- Hidari mitsu tomoe no maru (circle of three tomoe) --> Itakura Shigemasa 

- Kawari tsuru no maru (circle made of a crane) --> Mori Nagayoshi or Nanbu Toshinao.

 

Does some one know why this Edo tsuba shows these 3 mon all together ? What kind of historical backround ?

 

Additionnal question: Which school this tsuba belongs to ?

 

Thank you!

 

[Steves87]

I believe this may be covered in one of Gary Murtha's books. I have not read through his books in years, but it may be something relating to marriage or bloodlines between families?

I quite like the guard in anycase and the multiple Mon make for a somewhat rare piece too

[ROKUJURO]

TACHIKANAGUSHI? 

[Curran]

Nice tsuba.

 

I've seen all sorts of mon configurations on tsuba, up to somewhere between 5 to 7 on one tachi tsuba.

   With this Edo period one, the NBTHK could probably put it to several schools I'd guess in northern Japan. If they are being lazy, they probably would just say tachikanagushi (as Jean said).

 

 

 

[Kurikata]

Thank you Stephen , Jean and Curran, 

 

Difficult indeed to stick a precise school on it.

[Toryu2020]

Very difficult to assign a single mon to a single family - there being many generations, daughters and sons given to other families and the right to wear the mon given to many retainers. The important families had primary and secondary mon  and seeing these in combination can point us to the right family - sometimes. Three mon together is even better. Unfortunately in this case these are very common mon on their own. Checking the Taisei Bukan, there is only one family using the combination of the kirimon and tsurumaru, the 9th lord of Harima Mikazuki Han, Mori Toshishige - however they do not seem to have used the mitsudomoe - rather you see the character "Ju" (as in the number ten) - if there is any connection it may be some retainer of this Han...

-t