Higo-san

My guess is mid-to late 18th century Hoan due to the design and the - what I believe to see from the photos - Hoan typical tsujime treatment of the surface.

Hi David, thank you very much for the hint! Actually I did not want to call it either Bishu or Owari and therefore I called it both ! Because: on the one hand, there are Tsuba traditionally classified as Owari tsuba. But - only judging from pictures - I cannot detect the classical Owari tsuba criteria, e.g. tekkotsu, etc. On the other hand, the signature on the reference tsuba clearly indicates that this tsuba was made in Owari 尾張 (or Bishu 尾州). Therefore I could have either called it a Bishu tsuba (which I have never heard of, especially in terms of Yagyu producing schools) or a Bishu Owari tsuba (what I did). Of course, that might sound a little bit overdone... Best wishes, Chris

Hi Jean, a very similiar (signed) tsuba has been sold some weeks ago at Klefisch auction house: http://www.klefisch.com/index.php?page_ ... emid=20037 Therefore your tsuba could be classified as a Owari Bishu tsuba . Beautiful tsuba and sword, by the way... Kind regards, Chris

Thank you for the replies so far, gentlemen! By the way, Momoyama Kaga Yoshiro was also my guess. The diameter is 84.00 mm. Thickness is 3.5 mm. Best, Chris

Dear Fellow Board Members, I have attached three photos of one of my tsuba. I am happy for comments, opinions and of course kantei. I would also be glad, if someone could help me reading/verifying the signature. Many thanks in advance, Chris

Hello lotus, considering the opinions given in the previous posts and taking into consideration the quality of the forgery (from what can be seen on the rim of your tsuba), my - far away from an expert - guess would be Tosa Myochin school. Greetings, Chris

You are welcome, gentlemen! Next time I will hopefully be a bit faster . Chris

Thank you for the hint, John! Chris

First of all, greetings to you, ladies and gentlemen on this board! It is a great honour to be here on the board as a student and collector of tosogu. After having discovered this board it took me some time to go thorugh all the topics and finally I discovered this one. Ford`s utsushi is really stunning and maybe I can add something useful to this topic (in case no one else has added this before): In the first part, Ford mentions that the backside of the original tsuba remains kind of a mistery since the available publication only shows the frontside of the original tsuba. At this point, I remembered an old auction catalogue in my library. The image attached is a scan from the catalogue of "Nagel Auktionen Stuttgart" No. 29A that took place on June 8 2005 in Stuttgart/Germany. I think the original missing tsuba has been sold at this auction. The internet adress of the auction house is http://www.auction.de; I think there is another auction coming in November.