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

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

An unpublished catalogue of the A. H. Church collection of Japanese sword-guards (tsuba) by Albert James Koop.

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

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Tsuba with monkey and hawk

  • Literature notes

    Slightly concave between edge and seppadai; in low relief on the front a monkey on a rock by a stream waving to two others on an outlying dead tree-branch; their faces are in copper, and leaves and stems of a creeper are in copper, sentoku and gold; at the back, a hawk on a pine-tree stump, with three sails and water in the distance; creeper, bamboo-grass and riggings in gold wire inlay; edge formerly gilt in nunome.

    Signed: CHNJ Hachidō Tomonobu [Japanese text] saku. (Unrecorded; but a guard formerly in the Gaskell Collection, lot 1635, is signed by the same, with the additional name Gorozayemon.)
  • Details

    Associated place
    Asia Japan (place of creation)
    Date
    18th century (1701 - 1800)
    Material and technique
    iron, inlaid with copper, sentoku, gold, and gold wire, and with traces of gold nunome-zōgan decoration
    Dimensions
    8.2 x 8.2 cm (height x width)
    Material index
    Technique index
    Object type index
    No. of items
    1
    Credit line
    Bequeathed by Sir Arthur H. Church, 1915.
    Accession no.
    EAX.10347
  • Further reading

    Koop, Albert James, The A. H. Church Collection of Japanese Sword-Guards (Tsuba), 3 vols (Oxford, Ashmolean Museum, 1929), no. 347

Glossary (3)

nunome-zōgan, sentoku, tsuba

  • nunome-zōgan

    Decorative application of metal sheeting (generally of gold or silver) where the iron ground is first cross-hatched and the metal burnished on.

  • sentoku

    A kind of brass made from an alloy of copper, zinc, and tin.

  • tsuba

    Japanese sword guard.

Location

    • currently in research collection

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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)

    Slightly concave between edge and seppadai; in low relief on the front a monkey on a rock by a stream waving to two others on an outlying dead tree-branch; their faces are in copper, and leaves and stems of a creeper are in copper, sentoku and gold; at the back, a hawk on a pine-tree stump, with three sails and water in the distance; creeper, bamboo-grass and riggings in gold wire inlay; edge formerly gilt in nunome.

    Signed: CHNJ Hachidō Tomonobu [Japanese text] saku. (Unrecorded; but a guard formerly in the Gaskell Collection, lot 1635, is signed by the same, with the additional name Gorozayemon.)
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