Pine moon tsuba thoughts please

[Ron M]

Good morning to you all, please look at this tsuba I received with a wakizashi. It’s 64x61mm, 4mm thick at edge but about 4.4mm at seppa-dai. Same scene on both sides pretty much, gold fleck objects on landscape, but one side the moon is silver and one side is black lacquer.

All thoughts are welcomed. Regards 

[Dan tsuba]

Hello Ron M,

 

That is my kind of tsuba, old and rusted!

 

I like it!

 

Motif seems to be a pine tree in the mountains (maybe with water on the lower left), cloud and moon on the omote side.

 

Then on the ura side.  Same scene with pine tree and water.  But there is a mountain shown on the upper right.  Could be Mt. Fuji?

 

 I have a hard time discerning the moon on this side of the tsuba.  There appears to be some sort of gold fleck on Mt. Fuji, but I don’t know what that is.

 

Nice!

 

With respect,

Dan

 

[Matsunoki]

It’s a fair bet that the design depicts Mt Fuji and the surrounding forests together with one of the 5 lakes that are in the vicinity in the moonlight.

I wonder if the “black moon” is in fact oxidised silver rather than lacquer? 
Does the summit of the mountain have a similar “black look”? If so that could be oxidised silver depicting a snow covering.

 

[Ron M]

No silver on the mountain, only old iron. The black moon does appear to be laquered tho, and the gold flecks are just gold flakes, maybe pilgrims 🧐

[Matsunoki]

Hi Ron

Just to make sure we are looking at the same thing……this was the area that I thought looked possibly like blackened silver. Sometimes old silver, especially if applied as nunome zogan can turn black and almost “melt away”

[Ron M]

5 hours ago, Matsunoki said:

Hi Ron

Just to make sure we are looking at the same thing……this was the area that I thought looked possibly like blackened silver. Sometimes old silver, especially if applied as nunome zogan can turn black and almost “melt away”

No, it doesn’t appear to have anything on it. 

[Spartancrest]

Polished iron for the mountain peaks.

 

It might be sacrilegious to say - but I love tsuba like this - they are not just something to look at or put away in a drawer. This type of tsuba deserves to be helped back to good health and they give me hours of "fun" cleaning them and often I find a gem under the rust and dirt. 

 

We are just custodians of these things so we should make sure they are passed on in as good or better condition than they came to us.

[Winchester]

For what it's worth, I think it's cool. Thank you for sharing...

 

I view tsuba in this fashion as an art/collectible, for viewing, enjoying, and just fun. 

 

Not a Michael Jordan Rookie card (as an analogy), but fun to enjoy and that's the important part. Congrats!