Sword Guard (Tsuba)

Cleveland Museum of Art

The Sword Guard (Tsuba) is a circular, dark brown metal object with a weathered appearance. The object has a dark brown color with lighter brown spots scattered across its surface. It has a large central hole with a distinctive teardrop shape and two smaller oval-shaped holes on either side. There are two horizontal lines cut into the metal at the top and bottom, and two more on either side of the central teardrop-shaped hole, which appear to be decorative or functional. The background of the image is black at the top and fades to gray at the bottom.