Sword guard (Tsuba) With Flower Basket Motif (花籠透鐔)

Fittings maker 萩谷勝平 Hagiya Katsuhira Japanese
 Fittings maker 鈴木勝容 Suzuki Katsuhiro Japanese

On view at The Met Fifth Avenue in Gallery 380

This is the smaller guard (tsuba) of a pair of sword guards that is the product of a collaboration among three artists. The father and son Hagiya Katsuhira (萩谷勝平, 1804–1886) and Suzuki Katsuhiro (鈴木勝容, 1827–1886) made the smaller guard, for the wakizashi, in 1860. It features an extraordinary openwork design of a flower basket whose quatrefoil rim is decorated with a Greek-style key pattern inlaid in gold. Ishiguro Masaaki (石黒政明, born 1813) crafted a larger guard (acc. no. 19.71.7) of the same design to create a matching set for the traditional pair of swords worn by a samurai .

Sword guard (<i>Tsuba</i>) With Flower Basket Motif (花籠透鐔), 萩谷勝平 Hagiya Katsuhira (Japanese, 1804–1886), Iron, copper-silver alloy (<i>shibuichi</i>), gold, silver, copper, Japanese

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Obverse

Sword guard (<i>Tsuba</i>) With Flower Basket Motif (花籠透鐔), 萩谷勝平 Hagiya Katsuhira (Japanese, 1804–1886), Iron, copper-silver alloy (<i>shibuichi</i>), gold, silver, copper, Japanese
Sword guard (<i>Tsuba</i>) With Flower Basket Motif (花籠透鐔), 萩谷勝平 Hagiya Katsuhira (Japanese, 1804–1886), Iron, copper-silver alloy (<i>shibuichi</i>), gold, silver, copper, Japanese

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