Browse: 10610 objects
Tsuba with noshi, or auspicious abalone
-
Details
- Associated place
- Date
- 1st half of the 18th century
- Artist/maker
-
Shōami Morikuni (active first half of the 18th century) (armourer)Shōami School (active 1601 - 1909) (armourer)Iyo-Shōami (possibly active 1601 - 1909) (armourer)
- Material and technique
- iron, with cut and filed openwork decoration; reverse silvered or tinned
- Dimensions
- 8.9 x 8.9 cm (height x width)
- Material index
-
processed material › metal › iron,
- Technique index
-
cut,covered › metallized › silvered,covered › metallized › tinned
- Object type index
-
arms/armour › koshirae › kodogu › tsuba
- No. of items
- 1
- Credit line
- Bequeathed by Sir Arthur H. Church, 1915.
- Accession no.
- EAX.10251
-
Further reading
Koop, Albert James, The A. H. Church Collection of Japanese Sword-Guards (Tsuba), 3 vols (Oxford, Ashmolean Museum, 1929), no. 251
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)
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.
© 2013 University of Oxford - Ashmolean Museum