Brown iron tsuba for a katana, mokko (4 lobes) shaped and a maru (rounded) rim.
It has an insect theme with realistic and high definition dragonfly, mantis and grass. The base has a non-polish ishime-ji (stone surface) texture and the relief a tekkotsu (iron bone) texture; there is gold-raised zogan (inlay) on the eyes and accents and silver zogan on the leaves. There are two small hitsu-ana (openings): one kozuka (utility knife) and one kogai (utility pin).
[Signed Katsuchisa of Mito. Dated autumn, 6th year of Ansei (1859). Decorated with copper gold alloy.]
Bequeathed by S. R. Turner
Method of acquisition: Bequeathed (1973) by Turner, S. R.
19th Century
Production date:
AD 1859
Base
composed of
iron
Depth 4.2 mm
Depth 5.2 mm
Length 81.7 mm
Width 75.4 mm
Insect Accents
composed of
gold
Grass
composed of
silver
Decoration
copper and gold Copper (alloy)
Accession number: O.11-1973
Primary reference Number: 169575
Stable URI
Owner or interested party:
The Fitzwilliam Museum
Associated department:
Applied Arts
This record can be cited in the Harvard Bibliographic style using the text below:
The Fitzwilliam Museum (2026) "Tsuba" Web page available at: https://data.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/id/object/169575 Accessed: 2026-08-04 06:09:19
To cite this record on Wikipedia you can use this code snippet:
{{cite web|url=https://data.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/id/object/169575
|title=Tsuba
|author=The Fitzwilliam Museum|accessdate=2026-08-04 06:09:19|publisher=The
University of Cambridge}}
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https://data.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/api/v1/objects/object-169575
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