Tosho tsuba advice

[cdrcm12]

Hi,

Looking for a bit of advice on this one I recently picked up.

 

To me looks like a Tosho tsuba, possibly later Muramachi period, with I think the original hitsu ana? The design looks to be two geese through a door/window?

The tsuba has a relatively even thickness of roughly 3mm, there is a very slight concave dip around the seppa dai on the omote side. It also looks to have had a polished finish originally, most of this now lost to surface corrosion, dimensions below:

Height: 79mm

Width: 78.5mm

Mimi: 3.1mm

Seppa dai: 3mm

Nakago ana: 32mm x 8mm

 

There is evidence of possibly mounting with tagane on both sides of the nakago ana, I also think there is a small tekkotsu on the rim, hopefully I've captured this in one of the images below.

 

Would be good to hear of others views please?

 

[rkg]

Is the surface really that grey color?

 

If so, that and the alternating coarse surface corrosion and the not really well defined seppa zuri makes me think it might have been burned at some point and the smooth surface might be scale.

 

That does appear to be an early hitsu, though its hard to say if it is original to the piece or added later.  From the thickness, I would guess its pre-edo, though kozuka came on the scene fairly late, so if original sometime at the end of the muromachi/ or momoyama might be a better date for the piece.  On the other hand, older pieces often were flat on one side and "worked" on the other like you are describing, though typically the mimi is thinner than the seppa dai area on pieces that show that.  But hey, they're all individuals at that point, so...

 

Best,

rkg

(Richard George)

 

[cdrcm12]

Thanks for replying Richard.

 

It may be the light that I used in taking the images, too artificial, that makes it look like scaling. There is a lot of surface corrosion, the smooth areas look more blackish.

 

I've taken another image below in natural light, unfortunately not very sunny in Scotland today!

 

[ROKUJURO]

With the good and detailed description, this nice TSUBA has an early EDO feeling for me. The slightly thicker MIMI sounds more appropriate to a later manufacture, I think. 

[FlorianB]

It is difficult to determine the age. There are specimen about the same thickness which date back to be Muromachi-period, so I think Richard is right.
However it is worth to recover the beauty by removing the rust and careful rubbing.

 

BTW on Paul’s Tsuba.info is also an example with karigane in a cartouche: https://tsuba.info/tosho/

 

Best,
Florian

[cdrcm12]

Thanks Jean and Florian, started the process of fussing with it.

 

The tsuba on Paul's site is a very useful comparison.

[Soshin]

The photo of the second post looks much better in terms of the real color of the surface. The iron bones in the one photo look nice. Looking at the tsuba from limited number of photos provided it does looks to be rust pitted a fair amount. The original polish nature of the plate as well as the overall thickness and lack of change in thickness of the plate between seppa-dai and mimi. This is called (niku 肉置) and is an important consideration for determining age. Taking all these features into consideration makes me think that it dates from approximately the early Edo Period. The specific shape of the kozuka hitsu-ana which I think is original to the tsuba also reminds me of the Early Edo production period. Nice tsuba thank you for sharing for discussion! 

 

P.S. @FlorianB Thank you for providing a link to Paul's website. I remember meeting him at DTI this year. I need to add his website to my collection of URLs.            

[cdrcm12]

Thanks for your response David.

Some newer images below that highlight the extent of the surface pitting but I think it's starting to look a lot better after a bit of rubbing. There is evidence of the original polished surface around the seppa dai and small areas across the whole tsuba (I think this is what Richard picked on as scaling from my first images).

I like this piece even in this worn state and will hopefully consolidate from any further demise.

[Soshin]

 

Hi Colin T.,

 

The seppa-dai area would have been protected from moister when the tsuba was mounted on a sword. So, you would expect less corrosion of the iron around the area that contacted the seppa and then the tsuka on the omote side.

 

On 11/24/2023 at 7:00 AM, cdrcm12 said:

I think it's starting to look a lot better after a bit of rubbing.

    

That sounds like a good approach. Just some good rubbing with a plain cotton rag that is not hard, or abrasive is fine (sandpaper is unbelievably bad). I do that occasionally, with my old iron tsuba to lightly clean away the surface of any soft active red rust and maintain the patinated surface of harder black rust.

 

    

[ROKUJURO]

2 hours ago, Soshin said:

.....The seppa-dai area would have been protected from moisture when the tsuba was mounted on a sword. So, you would expect less corrosion of the iron around the area that contacted the seppa and then the tsuka on the omote side.....    

I have seen some TSUBA where moisture was obviously trapped under the SEPPA and had led to massive corrosion of the SEPPA-DAI.