MauroP

Hi Georg, I think you have three honest tsuba (Japanese words doesn't have plural forms), possibly from middle-late Edo time. Since they all are supposed to be used on katana/wakizashi, your pics are upside down. Little to say about the first one. The smaller one could be Shōami or Nara, the third one (with dragon and clouds) looks like Higo style.

Ciao Luca, the shinchū-zōgan decoration of your tsuba is usually referred as 桔梗唐草文 - kikyō karakusa-mon, so more a stylized pattern than a naturalistic representation. See: http://www.aisf.or.jp/~jaanus/deta/k/karakusamon.htm

That's mine

Sometimes its hard to recognize a subject in artistic representation. Here a traditional representation of a plover (千鳥 - chidori), surely quite different from the true animal in nature.

Hi Grev, indeed it looks like a Noh or Kyogen mask (小猿 - Kozaru - Child Monkey) rather a true monkey. https://nohmask.jp/mask/k_kozaru.html

Karigane (wild geese) have many different representations. Here below some examples: Anyway, I think I have in my collection a piece with stylized bats (kōmori zu - 蝙蝠図):

Hi, I think Tomohisa (智久) and Kōfu-jū Toshimasa (江府住 利政)

recumbent water buffalo

雲龍図鐔 無銘 水戸 竪丸形 真鍮石目地 鋤出彫 象嵌色絵 両櫃孔 (笄櫃埋 ) 打返耳

Nice tsuba, but in my opinion not as good as average Mino works. More probably Kyō-kanagushi.

Bruno, Japanese tsuba artisans surely mastered their skills at an unbelievable level, so no surprise they were able to reproduce in small series wonderful pieces. So I've paid attention to make confrontation just between yose-tagane and sekigane that are supposed to be adaptations to a specific sword tang. My conclusions are that the tsuba reproduced in the booklet and the one in the Naunton collection catalog are the very same tsuba. Well, alternative explanation is far less favourable...

Hi Dick, the bird is a hawk (taka) and the vegetable an eggplant (nasubi). The theme is known as hatsuyume (初夢), i.e. the first dream one has in the new year. It was considered to be particularly good luck to dream of Mount Fuji, a hawk and an eggplant.

Just a little of selfpromotion about themes in tsuba https://www.dropbox.com/s/frt7dkpoj6b5x8y/FHJ.pdf?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/7cgrf6pfluf15xw/Tsuba%20-%20Kodogu%20Gadai%20Jiten.pdf?dl=0

The 2nd column: 鉄地 変形 鋤出彫 - tetsu-ji kawari-gata sukidashi-bori Ciao Luca, nice tsuba, I also tryed to get it on Yahoo Japan. PS - I'm curious about the possible meaning of Japanese fiber banana in tōsōgu. Any idea?

Hi Greg, actually most of tsuba you have posted here are not true mu-hitsu-ana but are usually referred as kata-hitsu-ana-shitate (i.e. with a single space for implement cut-out from the sukashi design).