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

Groups [Namban work, exhibiting foreign influence] and [Hirata school (17^th to late 19^th century) and enamel work in general] illustrated the use of enamel, i.e. coloured glass fused to a metal base, to decorate sword-furniture. In the present group a somewhat similar treatment of fused metals is exemplified.

Certain iron guards exhibit an inlay of shirome or sawari (hard whitish alloys of copper, darkening with age) fused into hollows cut into the ground to receive it, the whole being finally polished smooth. The analogy with champlevé enamel is perfect. Such work is usually signed Kunitomo Sadahisa or, more rarely, Hazama, another name of the Kunitomo family. It is sometimes called Kameyama inlay from the town in Ise province where it was chiefly made.

“Toad-skin” (gama-hada) is a term applied to a peculiar technique in which iron, having been encrusted with small pieces of silver, has been then subjected to a heat sufficient to fuse the silver into globules without allowing it to run away.

Tsuba with shippō diaper of interlaced circles (EAX.11181)    Tsuba with butterfly and mon made from kiri, or paulownia leaves (EAX.11182)    Tsuba with vine and squirrel (EAX.11183)

Tsuba with New Year straw rope and noshi, or auspicious abalone (EAX.11184)    Tsuba with banana palm (EAX.11185)    Tsuba with gama-hada, or toad skin, surface (EAX.11186)