Iron Sukashi Tsuba

Diameter: 7.9 cm x 7.5 cm
Thickness: 6mm

An iron sukashi tsuba. This is a nice late Edo period guard. Design is simple and elegant. Seppa-dai, kozuka- and kogai-hitsu are all big and graceful. The kogai-hitsu was plugged with a copper alloy. Because the seppa-dai is clean, this tsuba might have olny been used on one blade. The mimi is round. There are two opinions on the design motifs of this tsuba One is that this is the "tea ceremony" theme, and the other is the theme of "autumn food". There is a bowl on the kogai-hitsu side, which is the central pattern in both theories. In the tea ceremony theory, this bowl is considered as a tea cup. In the autumn food theory, the bowl contains some food, most probably Japanese noodle "Soba". There is a crescent moon which may indicate that the season is mid- to late fall. In another words, crescent moon indicates full autumn and we can expect activities in the full autumn such as harvest, new crop of foods, and prosperity. We suspect this could be a later generation Akasaka work or Akasaka-flavored makers such as Akao/Ido. This comes with a nice Paulownia wood box and is attractively priced.

Price: $575