Iron tsuba of round form with a butterfly (left) and dragonfly (right) design in openwork (sukashi), outlined with brass wire. The thin plate is also decorated with five concentric circular rows of brass dots (nail heads) in ten-zōgan; brass wire outlines the centre of the plate.

School: Ōnin ten-zogan. Late Muromachi period, 16th century.

Diameter: 88 mm, thickness at seppa-dai: 3.1 mm.

Another tsuba of similar design, Tōshō school, is illustrated in this collection; see TSU-0353.2018.

The design is referenced in LIB-1359.2017 Japanese Swords and Tsuba from the Professor A. Z. Freeman and the Phyllis Sharpe Memorial collections, Sotheby’s, London, Thursday, 10 April 1997; p. 18, item 37: “pierced with two large formalised butterflies…”

A Kamakura-bori tsuba of octagonal form, Momoyama period