A folklore museum in Crete
 

Hallo, recently i was very honored to inspect and discuss the weapons of a folklore museum in Crete. The items have been collected in the 20s and 30s, have been for long time in storage, have just been taken care, and they are ready to be put in their new display. I am not sure how to start because there many items and i dont know if we can fit them all in one thread, but we will start and we will see...
Best Regards!

Hi Eftihis,
Small, but very nice collection. To be given access to a museum's weapons fund is rare, at least in my experience museums in Bulgaria would never allow an amateur to even look at the items they have in storage, the only exception was a historical society allowed to restore a few pieces of artillery. Therefore to be given the chance to examine all these edged weapons, firearms and accessories must be a rare opportunity, congratulations.
Of all the weapons I find the axes the most interesting part, as I have not seen anything like them before. The rest of the items are easy to identify and catalogue, but the most interesting part is tracing how they arrived at Crete. Did the modern firearms and the bayonets arrive in Crete as part of the preparation for the insurrection of 1897?
Regards,
Teodor

Congratulations!

I'm also interested in the axes... how are they classified by the people at the museum? Is there a posssibilty for a close-up?

Thanks for sharing this with us :)

Axes
 

Hallo Marc, the descripton for the axes are "medieval 14th- 15th century". Crete was under Venetian domination from 1204 untill 1669, when the last city Candia, fell to the Turks.

Venetian Axes
 

It's interesting, I think I'm seeing the 'eyelash' marks on the large Axe . :confused: :shrug: :)

The second axe looks more like a tool than a purpose built weapon .

Thank you very much for the pictures, Eftihis, I really appreciate them :)

A cartidge leather case
 

I will continue with close ups for some items. This is an interesting leather case, still with catridges inside

Shamshir repair
 

Hi, this is something interesting, a repair of a shamshir's broken blade with an insert of steel in conical shape. But istead of hiding the repair they made it more defined with inlayed(?) brass. Actually the subject of old repairs on weapons is very interesting.