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Tsuba with swimming carp
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Details
- Associated place
- Date
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late 19th century
Meiji Period (1868 - 1912)
- Artist/maker
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Kanō Natsuo (1828 - 1898) (armourer)
- Material and technique
- iron, inlaid with soft metal, and with carved relief decoration; tang-hole plugged with soft metal
- Dimensions
- 8.9 x 8.2 x 0.5 cm (height x width x depth)
- Material index
- Technique index
- Object type index
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arms/armour › koshirae › kodogu › tsuba
- No. of items
- 1
- Credit line
- Presented by Sir Francis Oppenheimer, 1940.
- Accession no.
- EAX.3852
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Further reading
Impey, Oliver, and Joyce Seaman, Japanese Decorative Arts of the Meiji Period 1868-1912, Ashmolean Handbooks (Oxford: Ashmolean Museum, 2005), no. 27 on p. 58, pp. 60 & 68, illus. pp. 58-59
Oxford: Ashmolean Museum, 24 May 2006-23 December 2008, Treasures: Antiquities, Eastern Art, Coins, and Casts: Exhibition Guide, Rune Frederiksen, ed. (Oxford: Ashmolean Museum, 2006), no. 117 on p. 43, illus. p. 43
Glossary
tsuba
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tsuba
Japanese sword guard.
Location
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- 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
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Japanese Decorative Arts of the Meiji Period
Sword-guard (tsuba) of tapered rectangular shape in iron and soft metal with relief decoration of three carp, one leaping the other two swimming, on the reverse, a fourth carp swimming. Engraved signature: Natsuo with kakihan.
Kanō Natsuo (1828-1898) is usually acknowledged as the finest of the Meiji metalworkers, and, indeed one of the finest metalworkers of Japan of any period. He studied the making of sword-fittings, and later studied painting under the Shijō painter Nakajima Raishō (1796-1871).
Winner of almost every prize available to metalworkers in the National Industrial Expositions, he was also a judge at the Second, Third and Fourth Expositions. He worked for the National Mint, and in 1890 was created an Imperial Artist.
In all probability this tsuba, with its Shijō-derived design of carp, only just falls in our period; sword fittings were made to special order by several metalworkers even after the banning of the wearing of swords in 1876. Natsuo had been commissioned to make (or to decorate) a ceremonial tachi (slung sword) in 1871 by the Imperial Household Agency.
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