Project Description
Iron sukashi tsuba — irises (shōbu/kakitsubata)
Owari school, Momoyama–early Edo period
In fitted kiri box with silk shifuku
| Material | Wrought iron, ji-sukashi |
| Shape | Maru-gata |
| Motif | Iris plants — blossoms and sword leaves |
| Hitsu-ana | Two, integrated into the design |
| Surface | Coarse-grained tetsu with tekkotsu along the mimi |
| Dimensions | — (vertical × horizontal × mimi / seppa-dai kasane) |
| Papers | — |
| Accessories | Fitted kiri box, sealed; purple silk pad; patterned silk shifuku with toggle closure |
Description
The appeal of Owari sukashi lies in a particular kind of confidence: the willingness to let iron and open space do all the work, with no recourse to inlay, no soft-metal relief, no narrative. This tsuba is a good example of the school’s habit of taking a natural subject and building it as structure rather than picture. Iris plants are rendered as a radiating armature of sword-shaped leaves that spring from the base of the plate, arch across the ground, and terminate at either side in small blossoms — and in doing so they carry the load, tying rim to seppa-dai in a way that is structurally sound as well as visually satisfying. The design reads outward from the center in every direction without settling into symmetry, which is precisely the difficulty of the idiom and the reason well-composed examples remain in demand.
The plate carries a coarse, granular skin that catches light unevenly across the leaves and stalks, and tekkotsu emerge along the mimi where the forging has been worked and folded — the bone-like nodules that collectors of the Owari and Kanayama groups look for first, and which no amount of surface treatment can counterfeit. Around the nakago-ana the metal shows a rougher, more broken character where the plate was worked in fitting, giving that area a stony quality against the smoother sweep of the leaves. The overall effect is austere rather than refined, and deliberately so. This is the aesthetic that appealed to the tea-influenced martial taste of the late sixteenth century, where an object was expected to declare its material honestly.
The guard is stored in a fitted paulownia box with a purple silk interior, the interior of the lid carrying a hanko, and is protected in turn by a patterned silk shifuku.
