Project Description
森英秀 — Ōmori Eishū (Teruhide)
波千鳥図大小縁頭 — Daishō Fuchigashira, “Waves and Plovers” (nami-chidori)
NBTHK 特別保存刀装具 (Tokubetsu Hozon Tōsōgu) · № 2007637 · Reiwa 3 (14 July 2021)
- 銘 Mei: 大小銘 大森英秀（花押）— signed on both the dai and the shō, Ōmori Eishū, with kaō
- 地 Ji: 赤銅磨地 — shakudō migaki-ji (polished blue-black ground)
- 技法 Technique: 高彫 takabori · 象嵌色絵 iroe-zōgan · 象嵌 zōgan (gold and silver)
A matched daishō set of fuchi-kashira by Ōmori Eishū the pre-eminent master of the Ōmori school and, by common consent, the finest carver of waves in the Edo machibori tradition, active in Edo, mid-to-late 18th century. All four pieces are worked on a shakudō ground finished as a migaki-ji, against which the subject is raised in bold takabori and enriched with iroe-zōgan — inlaid gold and silver applied as polychrome detail.
The theme is the classic nami-chidori: plovers skimming a running sea. It is the ideal vehicle for Eishū’s celebrated ara-nami — the school’s signature “Ōmori waves” — carved in high relief as cresting, curling breakers, their spume flung up in gold iroe, with the chidori picked out in silver as they wheel above the swell. The design carries continuously around each fuchi and crowns each kashira, so that the matched long and short mounts read as a single seascape in miniature: flamboyant, sculptural, and quintessentially Edo in its theatricality.
Subject and hand are perfectly matched here. Waves are the motif on which Eishū built his reputation, and nami-chidori carries its own poetic weight — the shorebird over the waves is a stock image of waka, emblematic of perseverance and, through the pun chidori / “thousand birds,” of auspicious plenty.
