Chinese Sword Museum - Hangzhou

[CutlassCollector]

On a recent visit to China I found this sword museum tucked between - the much less interesting - Scissor Museum and Umbrella Museum. It concentrates almost exclusively on Chinese swords from several hundred years BCE up to modern times.
There was very little information translated into English from Mandarin but here are some photographs.


Below:
From years BCE to 1368 start of the Ming Dynasty.

[CutlassCollector]

Ming Dynasty 1368 to 1644

[CutlassCollector]

Qing Dynasty 1644 to 1911

[CutlassCollector]

Republic of China 1911 to 1949

I include these from the 20th century (hopefully allowable) for interest and to show the continuity of some features
These were issued to troops fighting the Japanese in the 1930's.

[Ian]

CC:

Thank you for posting these. This museum seems like a good place to visit. It's a shame they have not preserved some of these swords in better shape. They all look as though they need a good clean and some rust prevention.

Do you have any further pictures of older swords from this site?

Ian.

[CutlassCollector]

Hi Ian,

Yes, I agree the swords do not appear to be well preserved. The museum is still fairly new so hopefully they will catch up with that and with the translations.
For obvious reasons the display of early swords was limited but I attach the other photos from that period.
CC.

[josh stout]

Very nice and greatly appreciated. I am skeptical about the "Ming" attribution for meany of the village jian. People have been debating their age for a while, and the general consensus is there is no way to date them accurately. Phillip Tom and Artzi laughed at my attempts to date similar examples and any claims toward their being Ming. Such examples might be, but a later 17th or 18th century date is more likely. If I were to go out on a limb, I would call those early Qing, based on the fittings and blade styles. There is a narrow bladed example that may be earlier, but most have pommels and guards that are often attributed to the Qing. There is one wooden handled example that is in a Ming style but I would attribute it to of a type of wooden handled Daoist ritual sword frequently seen using Ming forms.

I am even less confident about any attempt to date the sabers. The blade forms certainly are similar to Ming depictions, but they persisted through the 19th century, and I see nothing that would definitively place the majority earlier than the late 18th c.. Conservatively I would place the majority in the early to mid 19th c..

If anyone has a good reason to assign better dates, please tell me.

[CutlassCollector]

Hi Josh,

Thanks for your input, sorry I can't help you any further with dates as my knowledge of Chinese swords is minimal. The museum only attributed to period or dynasty and, as I'm sure you know, that can vary from short periods to three centuries.
I did notice that almost all the Ming and Qing swords had been donated by one individual. So perhaps when the government built the museum they accepted the catalogue at face value rather than instituted more rigorous research.
I believe the museum is still a work in progress to some extent.
CC

[David R]

Many thanks for posting the above pictures, nice to see a museum of Chinese swords.