The online collection and picture sale

This tsuba, in my view at least, is one of the finest in the collection: done on iron with no further metals for decoration, it is completely round and has pierced openwork decoration in the metal with eight very stylized pine trees. Although there is nothing else, the forms of the pines, their asymmetrical distribution over the tsuba surface, and the abstract sense with which they have been made gives us a typically Japanese creation. From the signature of «Kunihiro, when he lived in Musashi», we can be sure that this is a work from the early 18th century. (Fernando García Gutiérrez, 2008)

Selected bibliography

• Pereda, Arantxa. La Colección Palacio : arte japonés en el Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao [Cat. exp.]. Bilbao, Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao, 1998. p. 47, n° cat. 22.
• García Gutiérrez, Fernando. "Tsuba : Japoniako zaldunen ezaugarri bat. Tsuba bilduma Bilboko Arte Eder Museoan = Un signo distintivo de los caballeros de Japón. Colección de tsuba en el Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao = The Mark of the Kinghts of Japan. The Tsuba Collection at the Bilbao Fine Arts Museum", B'07 : Buletina = Boletín = Bulletin, n° 3. 2008. pp. 101-159.
• Sala Ivars, Marcos Andrés. "Estudio y catalogación de las colecciones públicas de sables japoneses en el País Vasco", Ars Bilduma, n. 11. 2021. p. 75.
• Arte japonés y japonismo [Cat. exp.]. Bilbao, Bilboko Arte Ederren Museoa-Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao, 2014. pp. 165, 507-511, 513, 517, n° cat. 29.