Craftsmanship in Wood

Finished:

Really beautiful work!

Thank you. It only took me 11 months (lots of interruptions and pausing tho').

Good job! Is it modeled after an existing example, or style of maker?

Thanks Chris. I hesitate to say its my own design, because there is obviously very much influence from other tsuba I've seen. But it isn't a copy of an antique (which all of my other "creations" so far have been). The arrangement of the iris is a copy from an antique (a fairly common motif), but the inspiration for the heron against the sun comes from a local artist friend who painted something similar and gave me the idea of using a similar composition. So I've blended the two and as such, its doesn't conform to a particular school, but would just be classified as "sukashi" (open-work) style or technique (used by a great many of the tsuba schools historically). Also, I'm not very accomplished at carving, so the emphasis is on the silhouette rather than surface detail.