Browse: 175 objects
Tsuba with characters and flowers
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Details
- Associated place
- Date
- 2nd half of the 17th century
- Material and technique
- iron, with cut and filed openwork decoration, and traces of silver and gold nunome-zōgan decoration
- Dimensions
- 7.9 x 8 cm (height x width)
- Material index
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processed material › metal › iron,
- 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.10368
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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. 368
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)
Pierced in negative silhouette with a ring of eight repetitions of the character [Japanese text] (meaning "negation" or "nothing") in a cursive form [Japanese text], the same being repeated on each face, alternately with the perforations, in silver nunome (with a little gold); on the square edge, overlapping each face, are eight twelve-petalled flowers in the same technique.
An important guard, but much worn (probably burnt), so that mere traces of the nunome remain. The character, when set within a slender ring, forms a badge of the Sengoku daimiō.
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