Browse: 10610 objects
Tsuba with a scroll and the god Kwanu's spear
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Details
- Associated place
- Date
- 1st half of the 19th century
- Material and technique
- iron, with cut and filed openwork decoration, gold nunome-zōgan decoration, and with gold and silver
- Dimensions
- 7.3 x 7 cm (height x width)
- Material index
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processed material › metal › iron,processed material › metal › gold,
- Technique index
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cut,
- Object type index
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arms/armour › koshirae › kodogu › tsuba
- No. of items
- 1
- Credit line
- Bequeathed by Sir Arthur H. Church, 1915.
- Accession no.
- EAX.10714
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Further reading
Koop, Albert James, The A. H. Church Collection of Japanese Sword-Guards (Tsuba), 3 vols (Oxford, Ashmolean Museum, 1929), no. 714
Glossary (2)
nunome-zōgan, tsuba
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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.
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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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The A. H. Church Collection of Japanese Sword-Guards (Tsuba)
Modelled in openwork as the dragon spear of Kwanu (Kuan Yü, the Chinese war-god), together with a partly unrolled scroll of manuscript (treatise on war), both coiled about the seppadai; the eyes of the dragon head are gilt in nunome, its teeth are in silver; the roller-tip of the scroll is in gold.
This signature is not uncommon; compare the two next [EAX.10715 and EAX.10716]. Wada mentions a Sunagawa Masatora, not a Nishikawa Masatora. Hara gives only the Nishikawa Masatora of Yedo mentioned by the Sōken Kishō as still living in 1781. The two names may belong to the same man.
Compare, for the subject, No.1127 [EAX.101127].
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