An important domaru gusoku (samurai armour) dating: 19th Century provenance: Japan, Hoshi bachi kabuto with iron hachi featuring sixteen cusped plates. Gilded brass scales engraved on the back and on the front. Large tehen kanamono with engraved external disc. Big fukigaeshi loaded with Ume kamon. Beautiful and wide shikoro. Maedate with gilded wooden dragon. Inside the skull, on the leather, the handwritten signature 'Mito ju Miyochin ki Yoshinaga saku' (by Yoshinaga, a resident of Mito province). Black lacquered iron menpo (a hook of the nose-piece detached) with well-preserved finishing and large yodare kake. The other elements all en suite with nadowa, do, sode, kote, kusazuri, haidate, suneate, all with fastenings and mounted on contemporary fabrics. Complete with wooden mannequin and two gusoku-bitsu. Provided with a lacquered and certified gunsen. Epoch: late Edo period. Elegant Japanese armor of very high quality, complete and coeval, of the Domaru type entirely in black lacquered hon-kozane and laced kebiki ito odoshi in blue and white. With a 2010 certificate from an art gallery in Paris, which indicates that Yoshinaga used to make armors in the Mito region, serving the local part of the Tokugawa family. Tokugawa Nariaki himself (1800-1860, father of Yoshinobu, the last shogun) brought the master gunsmiths of the myochin family to this region, and he let them bear the name of 'Yoshi-'. The sui fukigaeshi mon are probably those of the Maeda family of Kanazawa, the gallery studied the relationships between the Maeda from Kanazawa and the Tokugawa from Mito.See 'Armures du Japon' by R. Burawoy (Fondation Kozu, Torilinks Editions 2005, Paris) particularly the armours number 37, 41 and 47. height as shown circa 145 cm.