Tsuba Authenticity - Opinions Please?

[FBJ]

First post. Wish I'd found this forum sooner.

 

May I politely ask you your opinion on this tsuba which I'd recently purchased from eBay? Just wanted some feedback on whether it appears authentic -- it does to my layman eyes -- but then I considered it might not be terribly difficult to force a convincing degree of age on an iron tsuba through patinization, etc. I went ahead and purchased it anyway because it looks nice and the listing was about to expire. The seller is Japanese, but as I understand from perusing several posts here that convincing fakes are making their way even out of Japan. One thing I later noticed is that the symmetry of the tang opening changes as you go through the images. The pictures of the tsuba in the box show the tang opening to be symmetrical while the other pics aren't, though the patina irregularities appear consistent across all the images (bad image resizing perhaps).

 

http://www.auctiva.com/hostedimages/sho ... 0&format=0

 

Also, this listing didn't mention if this tsuba was for a katana or wakizashi, though based on the size tang opening I'm thinking it might be a wakizashi tsuba. What do you think? I plan on fitting it on a katana, so if this were a wakizashi tsuba given the size of the opening, would this be a relatively easy fit?

 

Thanks,

 

Mike H.

[Gunome]

Hello,

 

Looks old, very thin... but I am far to have enought knowledge in tsuba to help you

 

Sébastien

[Marius]

Mike,

 

congratulations on your purchase :-) It seems to be a real tsuba - judging by the overall looks and the patina, it is not very old, late Edo perhaps. Still, a nice piece, I would like to have such a guard. There is active rust, which you might want to remove. Be very careful, as it is easy to ruin a perfectly decent tsuba if you don't know what you are doing. Please read this article very carefully, the advice there is priceless:

 

http://www.geocities.com/alchemyst/tsuba/tsubacln.htm

 

It will take you weeks of repeated work to clean the tsuba, but you will enjoy the result. I have worked on late Edo katchushi tsubas like this and I must say, that there was a huge difference between "before" and "after".

 

As far as fitting it on a katana is concerned - that is a matter of taste. It should look good on a small (60cm) katana, and rather not on a 70cm+ sword. Whatever you do, do not change the nakago ana in any way, should the nakago prove to be too large to fit the tsuba. No drilling, filing, etc... Better to look for another, better fitting tsuba than ruin a perfectly good one.

 

Hope that helps

[FBJ]

congratulations on your purchase :-) It seems to be a real tsuba - judging by the overall looks and the patina, it is not very old, late Edo perhaps. Still, a nice piece, I would like to have such a guard.

That's great, thanks for the feedback and the advice on cleaning up the tsuba.

 

Just so happens I found another webpage describing an identical tsuba. This isn't the one I purchased, but the description sheds more light on its history for me. This particular one is pretty beat up looking.

 

http://tsuba.jyuluck-do.com/TU10140.html

 

Thanks again!

 

Regards,

 

Mike H.

[Mark Green]

Mike,

I would say your Tsuba is 'real' for sure. In good shape as well, as said above. Should be very nice cleaned up a bit.

That wheel is a very common theme. I learned that only Royality could ride in anything with wheels.

Good get.

Mark G

[DirkO]

I think the theme is the buddhist wheel of life :

http://backpack4life.net/photos/thailand/images/654/640x480.aspx

[Guido]

Although often confused with a waterwheel, it's a cartwheel called Genjiguruma 源氏車 - a Google search might yield more info to inquiring minds ...

[DirkO]

Guess my more esotheric approach loses out to the more practical one :D

[Stephen]

one of the few things that stuck from college, there are two types of thinkers

classical and romantic. classical thinks about how the wheel goes around(the mechanicals of it) , romantic's thinks about how the world goes around (the philosophic's of it). Most of the time one can gleam who is who on the board

 

http://thevoiceswith.in/2009/07/classic ... rstanding/

[FBJ]

That wheel is a very common theme. I learned that only Royality could ride in anything with wheels. Good get.

Thanks! Nobody seemed interested in the auction. I was watching in for a few days and entered my bid in the last few seconds. I mused briefly about whether that would've been a tacit statement of there being something bogus about it, but I took a close look at the pictures and figured it must be legit.

Although often confused with a waterwheel, it's a cartwheel called Genjiguruma 源氏車 - a Google search might yield more info to inquiring minds ...

And it has, thanks for that!

 

What stood out about the tsuba for me was its simple, symmetrical design. Not really a fan of overly intricate designs.

 

Mike H.

[Pete Klein]

one of the few things that stuck from collage

 

Stephen -- I'm assuming you are refering to art class???

 

'A collage (From the French: coller, to glue) is a work of formal art, primarily in the visual arts, made from an assemblage of different forms, thus creating a new whole'. wikipedia.org

 

(lol)!

[Stephen]

a e not a a...sorry bad typeing.

[bluboxer]

Perhaps a cart wheel with 8 spokes embodies more than what is merely practical.

It may also be more aerodynamic at higher rpm's!

 

Alan

[FBJ]

It may also be more aerodynamic at higher rpm's!

Helluva shuriken that would be!

 

Anyhow, the tsuba arrived today and it appears to be the exact tsuba as shown in the pictures. It's in excellent condition as well. I'm going to fire off some daylight pictures so everybody could have another look.

 

Mike H.

[Mike]

Not completely off topic, here is a tsuba with similar design of Genji-guruman. The steel is deep black and the design is elaborate with gold nunome. It is 75 mm x 76 mm x 0.5 mm (the photo is very bad ).

 

Mike