Lotus Tsuba with silver inlay.

[Hector]

Picked this Tsuba up five months ago - any ideas as to school and age?

 

Best,

Hector

[Bugyotsuji]

Good questions! 

[Hector]

36 minutes ago, Bugyotsuji said:

Good questions! 

Thanks.

Any good answers?

[Spartancrest]

https://emuseum.cornell.edu/objects/18527/tsuba-with-pierced-design-of-6pointed-star-inlaid-with-squ  similar technique?  But the only others are in the Ashmolean museum and are listed as various offshoots of Shoami school - and that is a pretty general attribution as we all know. 

[Bugyotsuji]

I have more questions than answers. The box says simply 'silver zogan tsuba'.

 

I can see it's a thick, almost maru tsuba in iron, quite large, with an unusally wide square-cut mimi fukurin, silver nunome-zogan lattice-work pattern, no hitsu-ana, showing some evidence it may have been in use. Edo Period I reckon, but that is a wide ballpark. Where was it made? Maybe Spartancrest below will have some ideas.  (I'm getting a 'show his reply' message as I write). Is it really a lotus, or are those leaves of a sunflower, I am asking myself? Sunflower seeds are often suggested by a crosshatch.

[Hector]

Many thanks for the good replies. 👍

 

@Spartancrest Dale - that does look similar workmanship. So maybe the generic Shoami, then?

 

@Bugyotsuji Piers - you could be right but, in Buddhist art, deities are always seated on an eight leaved lotus. So I thought it might possibly tie in with the Buddhist beliefs of the man who carried it. But he may just have liked sunflowers!

 

Best,

Hector

[Bugyotsuji]

I’m eating my hat. An open eight-petal lotus flower.

https://kyuanji.jp/blog/2022/09/post-28.html

 

[Spartancrest]

What is this then? 

 is this related? 

Edited June 11 by Spartancrest

[Robert S]

There's some story there - it's curious that the axes of the lattice are not consistent across the piece.  I can't think of why a craftsman would have done that even if, say the piece was started, work stopped, and then resumed later.  Puzzled!

[Hokke]

The base texture of this tsuba is interesting. In jewelry we would call it a kind of Florentine finish. Is this criss cross pattern common? We have gravers made specifically for this texture, but hard to believe that would have had them in the 19th century…..but then, maybe not. 

[Spartancrest]

Nunome Zogan:  From this reference Nunome-zogan is NOT originally a Japanese technique - however they certainly mastered it 

 

Nunome Zogan means cloth weave overlay and uses very thin foils - 0.02mm thick and the gold is attached to the base metal by creating a cross-hatched ground made with chisels. Around 7 - 9 chisel marks per mm created in three different directions at 45 degrees to each other. The technique is a type of Damascening that was introduced to Japan by the Portuguese in the 16th Century.

The technique was originally used on Iron and Steel to decorate weapons although more recent practitioners have expanded this to include copper, brass and sterling silver. https://www.sandrawilson.co.uk/blog/nunome-zogan

 

https://www.scribd.com/document/439904095/Numone-Zogan

[Hokke]

32 minutes ago, Spartancrest said:

Nunome Zogan:  From this reference Nunome-zogan is NOT originally a Japanese technique - however they certainly mastered it 

 

Nunome Zogan means cloth weave overlay and uses very thin foils - 0.02mm thick and the gold is attached to the base metal by creating a cross-hatched ground made with chisels. Around 7 - 9 chisel marks per mm created in three different directions at 45 degrees to each other. The technique is a type of Damascening that was introduced to Japan by the Portuguese in the 16th Century.

The technique was originally used on Iron and Steel to decorate weapons although more recent practitioners have expanded this to include copper, brass and sterling silver. https://www.sandrawilson.co.uk/blog/nunome-zogan

 

Awesome, thanks for posting this. Today we use gravers with 6+ lines already cut into the tool, had no idea it used to be done with a single edge. That would be MINDNUMBING

Edited June 12 by Hokke

[Hector]

Many thanks to all who have contributed an answer - much appreciated!

 

Best,

Hector