Yamashiro kuni ju Umetada Mitsushige

[Iaido dude]

This tsuba has somehow ended up in my small and somewhat scattered collection from a distant past (25 years ago??) while I was living in Singapore and before I started collecting early sukashi tsuba at the beginning of this year.

 

I just had David help out with the mei translation. Haynes H05405.0. Based on death before 1781 (An Ei), this tsubako appears to be a contemporary of the 7th (Shigehide) and 8th (Yoshihisa) generation of the Umetada Kyoto School. The writing on the white stickies are from the previous owner (there is another one on underside of lid).

 

There is a carved and overlaid scene of two figures at 4:00 with landscape elements beneath clouds on omote. The tree and rocks wrap around to the ura. There are two kogai hitsu-ana of differing sizes.

 

74 mm (perfectly round), 4.7 mm, 4.0 at mimi. Comes in newish paulownia box.

 

$350 (or best offer)

 

 

[Iaido dude]

I found the certificate that I managed to keep in pristine condition . I think I might just keep this one. 

 

The scene apparently referring to The Twenty-four Filial Exemplars, also translated as The Twenty-four Paragons of Filial Piety (Chinese: 二十四孝), a classic text of Confucian filial piety written by Guo Jujing (郭居敬)^[1] during the Yuan dynasty (1260–1368). That's from Wiki.