TWO JAPANESE INLAID IRON TSUBA

TWO JAPANESE INLAID IRON TSUBA

EDO OR MEIJI PERIOD, 19TH CENTURY

The largest of oval shape and decorated to one side with two figures wearing Heian-style garments, the tallest possibly the poet Prince Narihara, with branches of pines above them and Mount Fuji towering above; the reverse with a figure looking in the distance seen from the back; the smaller tsuba of rhomboid shape with curved corners, decorated in openwork with butterfly apertures and inlaid with two chidori (plovers) flying above a stream, both unsigned, 6.9cm and 6cm respectively. (2)