Dragonfly motif
Iron, soft metals Maker unknown, Japan (71-017:B)This Japanese sword guard is one of four currently on display at the Morse in Louis Comfort Tiffany’s Laurelton Hall. Sword guards, known as tsuba, were highly collectible during Louis C. Tiffany’s lifetime, and Tiffany (1848–1933) owned thousands of them. While intricately decorated and highly beautiful, these objects served a functional purpose for members of Japan’s samurai caste—they were used to protect one’s hand from one’s own blade or that of an opponent. Tsuba were also important to the samurai culture, as the sword represented the family. Samurai carried swords for hundreds of years until 1876 when the Haitorei regulation outlawed the practice.
It is likely that millions of sword guards flooded Western markets after sword-carrying was prohibited. According to the June 1914 issue of The Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, “about 1880 the markets of all ‘curio’-loving countries were flooded with sword guards, and that never before or since have such admirable specimens, in any number at least, found their way out of Japan.” Tiffany’s friend and business associate Lockwood de Forest (1850–1932) bought 2,500 tsuba in Paris for Tiffany & de Forest Decorators (1880–82) in June of 1882. These were incorporated into interior spaces and objects like the c. 1883 iron fireplace hood that Tiffany originally created for his Seventy-Second Street house in New York City and later moved to his Long Island estate. Tiffany used sword guards as attractive pieces of decoration, because of their rich textures and sophisticated designs.