Dating the Schiavons sword

[Cathey]

Hi Guys

I am trying to put together a rough dating chart for Schiavona Swords. Like many of us I keep a data base of examples that come up at auction however the dating is often just c1600, which given the length of time these swords were around rarely accurate. For this exercise I am ignoring the dates attributed to blades and just concentrating on Guard construction.

This is what I have put together thus far, based on my library and Oakeshott of course. I understand that this is not even close to covering the variations out there, but have just picked those that appear to show the progressive complication of the baskets.

Any help with dating or validating this chart would be most appreciated.

I am currently working on an article to cover the Schiavona and its use, so I thought I would start with a simple way of attributing the evolution and re-dating more accurately those examples already in my data base.

Also, if anyone has a copy of Jean Binck had also penned a short article back in 2003, I would be most grateful as I seem to have misplaced my copy and every link I find to it I have been unable to download

Cheers Cathey