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Mokkō-shaped tsuba with Chinese sage standing with his attendant in a landscape
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Details
- Associated place
- Date
- 19th century (1801 - 1900)
- Material and technique
- iron, with cut and filed openwork decoration, and hammered-up edge; tang-hole plugged with soft metal, probably copper obverse: inlaid with sentoku and gold, and with silver nunome-zōgan decoration reverse: with engraved decoration
- Dimensions
- 8.9 x 8.4 cm (height x width)
- Material index
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processed material › metal › iron,processed material › metal › alloy › sentoku,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.10914
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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. 914
Glossary (3)
nunome-zōgan, sentoku, 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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sentoku
A kind of brass made from an alloy of copper, zinc, and tin.
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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)
Mokkō; on the right, standing on a rocky ledge, is a Chinese sage with his boy attendant, both in very high relief incrustation of sentoku and tinted gold; the man gazes at the full moon, which, with its disk silvered in nunome, is represented in openwork with wisps of cloud; back modelled and engraved with rocks overhanging water; hammered-up edge. Signed on the front in bold armourer's style: Sakuyō no shi ("a samurai [in the service of Matsudaira, lord] of Tsuyama, capital of Mimasaka province") Miōchin Ki no (see Group IV) Muneyasu [Japanese text]; and, on the back; Ichijō kizamu ([Japanese text], "chiselled").
As with No. 912, the two artists were contempories, and Ichijō was probably responsible for the addition of the two figures.
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