Small Preview on the History of Steel Catalog

[Antonio Cejunior]

Originally Posted by josh stout

Absolutely, stylistic anachronisms are common and a source of much interest. One of my favorite areas of study is the connection between Tibetan and Chinese swords. The Tibetan swords maintained the Tang dynasty style blade that early Japanese blades were based on. There are many examples of styles appearing hundreds of years from when they were most common. There is a whole class of usually short jian with iron fittings that are in a Ming style but which may be late nineteenth century. I have not talked with anyone who can definitively tell when they were made. In my own collection I have a Yi minority chopper that looks exactly like the Song dynasty shoudao that are depicted in Thomas Chen's website. I am fairly certain my chopper was made between 1920 and 1950.

One of my great hopes is that the carbon dating techniques being developed for steel will find their way to museums so that we can finally have some definitive dates.

(http://radiocarbon.library.arizona.e...pplication/pdf)

Josh

Hi Josh,

We are in total agreement.
I'm totally alien to Tibetan blades so I'm not the right person to ask.
So far I understand that the Silk Road played an important part on the connection, but not necessarily exclusive.
We once thought about the Met in NY for collaboration but the Weapons curator was busy with an exhibition on Tibetan swords. You should check out about it.