Decoration and styling in Scottish Basket Hilts

[Jim McDougall]

Originally Posted by toaster5sqn

Jim,
I'm referring to how the side bars meet the pommel so as not to conflict with the wrist as seen in the attached photo. Traditionally they came in horizontally as per the left hand sketch but the basket I was commenting on they were dropped below the horizontal as per the right hand sketch. Hope this makes it clearer.

Yes I was refering to Charles Roworth's "Art of Defence" and John Taylor and Henery Angelo(senior)'s work from the end of the 18thC and start of the 19th sorry for contracting it all to Rowarth etc. The 'a' was a simple spelling oops and their work is such a baseline in the HEMA community that it's easy to forget that it's virtually unknown once you move beyond it.

Thanks for taking the time to answer my query.

Robert

Thank you Robert, and for the additional explanation. Quite honestly the swordsmanship and HEMA factors are quite unknown to me overall, though I have a degree of familiarity. I find it all quite fascinating of course, so by looking further into this myself I wanted to understand more to continue at least somewhat lucid questions

While I have, as noted, never thought of any basket hilt in a thrusting capacity, it seems certainly there were such occasions. In the case of Rob Roy, in this time in Scotland (early 18th c) there was a popularity in dueling events, and surely a more refined system and style of fencing was in place.
In battle, the broadsword was of course, much more free style, actually probably pretty wild.

Your question though brought to mind the fact, as noted, these basket hilts were remounted with curved blades. Though I am not sure of the structural element as far as fencing.............what I do find interesting is that at this time (1804) when this work was presented, they were trying to join the fencing methods with broadswords into use of the saber.

I have always wondering WHY would they put a curved cavalry blade on this basket hilt......as noted mine is not the only example..
But this perspective seems to suggest a possible physical aspect of this period and employing these theories.

[toaster5sqn]

Originally Posted by Jim McDougall

I have always wondering WHY would they put a curved cavalry blade on this basket hilt......as noted mine is not the only example..
But this perspective seems to suggest a possible physical aspect of this period and employing these theories.

Curved blades on basket hilts go back at least to the German Dussak (spelling?) which is outside my area of interest so I can't put a date to that without doing some research. Basically there is no hard rule that a particular hilt type must go with a particular blade type and someone somewhere has attempted at least one example of every possible combination. Sabres were favored for their cutting power and basket hilts were favored for both protection and for moving the point of balance back enough to allow a relatively heavy sword to still be somewhat nimble in the point.

Robert

[Jim McDougall]

The dusagge, or often termed 'Sinclair saber' of North Europe was indeed the inspiration for the basket hilt which apparently actually came into Britain, before evolving into the Scottish basket forms (in early times termed 'Irish hilts').
These stout bladed early sabers were also seen as cutlasses, most typically with shell guards.