Eastern Art Online, Yousef Jameel Centre for Islamic and Asian Art

Ashmolean − Eastern Art Online, Yousef Jameel Centre for Islamic and Asian Art

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Tsuba with noshi, or auspicious abalone

Glossary

tsuba

  • tsuba

    Japanese sword guard.

Location

    • currently in research collection

Objects are sometimes moved to a different location. Our object location data is usually updated on a monthly basis. Contact the Jameel Study Centre if you are planning to visit the museum to see a particular object on display, or would like to arrange an appointment to see an object in our reserve collections.

 

Publications online

  • The A.H. Church Collection of Japanese Sword-Guards (Tsuba) by Albert James Koop

    The A. H. Church Collection of Japanese Sword-Guards (Tsuba)

    Profile of two double ogees side by side; openwork design; modelled as two bundles of noshi, of which the bound ends spring from the top and bottom of the seppadai; the strips then divide and fall (or rise) in cascades to right and left.

    The back appears to have silvered or tinned. Noshi are dried strips of the flesh of the awabi (Haliotis, ormer or sea-ear), bundles of which are attached to New Year and other gifts to symbolise the primitive ages when man lived on fish.

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