Hand and a Half Sword
 

Recently purchased from auction. Got it in today and love it. Reported to be from the William Fagan collection. 130cm total length. 4.5cm wide at the base of the blade. Fairly massive yet light weight for it's size. Blade somewhat flexible and still sharp. Does anyone recognize the crest or three stamps in the blade? Any idea as to the date of the style? Other similar examples with hexagonal blades? It reminds me of some two-hander blades. Could the grip be original? Any comments are welcome.

European Renaissance swords are not something I can comment on, but was hoping someone else would as this is a nice looking and interesting sword.

Teodor

Hi Casey ,
let me first congratulate you with this magnificent hand and a half sword !
This is one of the finest examples I have seen in years , these are rare and yours is in very good condition and with a wonderful homogeneous patina.
Everything is exactly how it should be, as you noticed it does not feel to heavy , swords for the field should feel well balanced and not heavy.
By that I mean one should be able to take them in your hands and wield them and it should feel comfortable doing so, no need to lean back to counterbalance the weight etc, of course with exception of some bearing swords , these can be heavier.
About the flexible blade , I found most of this wide type blades are flexible and for battle they should be, again the big bearing sword are less flexible.
There are a few two handed swords in the Palace of the Doge in Venice with exactly the same blade marks and the blades have similar geometry , as you can see on the pictures.
The blade marks can appear on blades going 15th C until early 17th C , however I would say your sword is German mid 16th century.
Kind regards
Ulfberth

Here is a sword in 1895 Sammlung Kuppelmayr with the same blade mark , however here there is only one stamp not 3, the sword is described as Italian between 1450 and 1500.

And a late gothic hand and a half sword circa 1500 with similar markings, in auction at Fischer almost 100 years ago , 1927.
And on a German hand and a half sword last quarter of the 16th C.

Thanks for all the info Dirk! I see some of the blades you posted also contain the eyelash marks which we know to be Italian. It seems the marks on my blade are more common than a simple smith mark. Sure wish we knew the meaning but it is probably lost to time.

well according to Staffan Kinman in the book "European makers of edged weapons , their marks" the marks are Northern Italy early 16th century.
Kind regards
Ulfberth

Great input/s Dirk :cool: .
Thanks a lot for sharing such info.

It seems to me that the marks are slightly different; one is symmetric, the other is not. The catalogue from Sammlung Kuppermayr states that the mark is from the Northern Italian city of Turin.

Is it normal for the cross guard to be so plain? The other examples posted have some decorations done at the terminals etc.

yes it is normal to have no decoration on the guard and or pommel, the other examples are even more exeptional swords.
More decoration cost more money and these things were very costly even in those day's. Blade marks don't have to be perfectly symmetrical, variations will occur depending on how worn the punch was and if the punch and the hammer were perfectly vertical when the marks were placed.

Link to previous post on Marca a Mosca mark: http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/showth...ighlight=mosca

To me the mark on the sword in post #1 looks different, but it could simply be a variation of this twig mark. All three stamps look different as does the example in the Kuppermayr catalogue.

I have a small, privetly printed, booklet in Danish, saying thet the blank parts are meant to be silver and the crossed parts are meant to be black.
I am not a specislist when it comes to coat of arms, but maybe this can help a bit.

I’m no expert on heraldry but the attached seems to suggest that the coat of arms is that of a count (crown with pearls at the peaks). The shield itself, or rather its embellishments, looks somewhat Italian in shape?

Thanks for the info. It looks like mine has 7 points so that would coincide with a Baron or Freiherr.

A google images search turns up lots of examples but nothing too close.

Try to find a forum where they discuss coat of arms. They should be able to help you further - good luck.

Maydell is the name of a Baltic German belonging to Uradel gender, which was several centuries in Estonia and there was one of the notorious families. In documents and texts of the first centuries, the surname is sometimes given in the spelling Maydel or Maidel.
contents


The family probably came to Estonia from northern Germany, as did some other knight families, when the landscapes of the north of the country, Harrien and Wierland, belonged to the domain of the Danish king (1219-1227 and 1238-1346). It is probably named after its first demonstrable fief in Estonia, the Dutch village of Maidla. The village is already mentioned in 1241 under the name Maydalae, but was then owned by the Danish governor to Reval Dominus Saxo.

The spread of a family from northern Germany in the course of the Christianization of the Baltic Sea region under several names is not an isolated case.

The oldest documentary mention of the family comes from the year 1363, when Hennekinus Maydel together with the councilman Gerhardus Witte in Reval, now Tallinn, acquired a house.


The descendants of the Danish court junker Gertken Meidel founded a Scandinavian line in the 17th century, which still flourishes in Sweden today as Slekten Meidell. [4]
The family of Maydell belonged to the Estonian knighthood, with some branches of the family, however, to Livonia or Kurland knighthood. On June 26, 1693 awarded the Swedish King Charles XI. Georg Johan Maydell, who is in Swedish service, for his military merits, the baron title. This was associated with his admission to the Swedish knighthood. However, the family branch founded by the Swedish baron Georg Johann Maydell already died out in 1814.


German university records of the 17th and 18th centuries lead members of the family as barons, as Jacob Friedrich 1671 in Leipzig and Georg Gustav 1752 in Halle.

As with other well-known families of the Baltic Uradels made in the Baltic provinces of Estonia, Livonia and Courland in the Russian period official recognition of the baronial state respectively the leadership of the title, last for the total sex with Ukas of the Imperial Russian Senate of December 7, 1854.

As a result of the Hitler-Stalin Pact, those residing in the Baltics of Maydell like most German Baltic had to leave their homeland in 1939 and were relocated to the area occupied by German troops to Posen ("Warthegau"). Today, members of the Maydell family live mainly in Germany, some branches of the family but also in other countries such as Austria, South Africa and Canada.

corrado26

I guess ...
 

Crown and coronet criteria varies among different countries. In one like mine, the Baron doesn't 'qualify' for those peak pearls. It only has them (always seven) in Denmark, Norway, Nederlands, Russian Empire and Holly Roman-Germanic Empire (new version).
Just as an aside, this frontal counting of pears, which they call apparent, comprehends the pearls we see front wise, meaning that the actual total of pearls is one applied in the whole round coronet ... not crown, as those are for Kings and Princes.

For me the best!

Thank you for bringing this thread back to the fore! Brilliant discourse with the 'top guns' of the forum bringing in incredible references and resourced data on this great example of a hand and a half sword.
The information shared by these guys is amazing, and a learning experience to reread this material and sort of 'recharge the batteries' ! :)
Well done.

I believe the coat of arms is more on a style of the middle to late XVIIIth century. It does not make much sense in a battle sword in use, and possibly was added much later, when the sword got other functions, pageants and such.

I haven't seen it mentioned yet, but the three marks on the blade are ofthen associated with swordsmiths from Belluno, in the Veneto region of Italy.