Vietnamese Guom

[Miguel]

Originally Posted by Sajen

Hello Miguel,

from the outside it's indeed a very nice guom which show age and wear but in a very good condition. Turn of the centuries?

Would like to see some close-up's from the blade but it seems indeed very rough worked. Is it laminated? Thick or thin?

The sword will look beautiful on the wall!

Regards,
Detlef

Hello Detlef, As promised photos of blade. Since your reply I have been carrying out a little research which has proved to be very interesting. Apparently these swords were carried by Officers of the Nguyen dynasty (1802 / 1945) and from the various images I have seen my sword is mid to late 19th C. The first emperor influenced the design of the sword which is a mixture of Vietnamese, European and Chinese, he favoured the Chinese hence the chape, decoration of the silver fittings and beautiful mother of pearl inlay. The blades on the images I found all looked more or less like mine, narrow, thin, pretty rough and not much use in combat but as they were used for official and ceremonial functions it did not really matter. A cnother common feature of the bladesw were two fullers changing to three part way along its length. I read where the Officers on the official occasions held their swords in the scabbards, vertically, with the the chapes pointing up.
The French confiscated as many of these swords as they could during their occupation and the Communists confiscated as many as they could of what remained during their rule so they would appear to be fairly scarce items and that I am lucky to own one Sorry to rabbit on but I thought you may be interested as you are the only member kind enough to reply.
Dimenions O/L with scabbard 36 ins, O/L without scabbard 32 ins, blade length 25.5 ins x 1 ins wide x 0.1875 ins thick.
Now photos.
Regards
Miguel