Ein Hō-ō zieht vorüber
A Hō-ō and Ivy
A phoenix tsuba of iron, almost square, with rounded and notched corners. Across the top a hō-ō flies to the right, worked in high relief. Its long tail feathers stream back along the upper edge in gold. The body is worked in a warmer, brownish alloy, brass or sentoku, and the crested head turns down toward the centre. At the lower right a stem of ivy rises from the rim, its pointed, lobed leaves in dark relief, and small stalks tipped with gold buds stand above them.
On the back the iron is left almost bare. A single ivy leaf with a gold flower stalk sits low at the left.
The Walters Art Museum, describing a guard with the hō-ō above paulownia, calls it a mythical bird similar to the phoenix and notes that hō-ō and paulownia are both auspicious. This maker set ivy beneath the bird instead, a plain climbing plant in place of the noble tree. The bird takes the whole upper edge and the ivy keeps to its corner below.
The guard is unsigned and has no paper.
Tsuba. Mumei. Tetsu, takabori-iroe in kin und shinchu oder sentoku. Kaku-gata mit gekerbten Ecken. Hō-ō tsuta-zu. Edo-Zeit. Privatsammlung, erworben in Europa.
In the collection
- Type
- Tosogu › Tsuba
- Period
- Edo-Zeit
- Material
- Tetsu
- Motif
- Drachen und FabelwesenPflanzen und Jahreszeiten
