1st May 2009, 11:01 PM | #1 |
Member
Join Date: Dec 2004
Location: Istanbul
Posts: 452
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Ottoman buckler with German tokens
Hi. Newly acquired small size -supposed to be Ottoman- shield,or buckler. Covered with coins or tokens of which i tried to show details in pictures. They all look same. I partially read them and searched the inscription LUD.LAUER*RECH on internet.The search resulted with this link; http://www.ancientpeddler.com/apgall...bum=210&pos=13 . There they are described as a 14th-17th or 16th-17th centuries German token. Can anybody give more details like exactly of which century or for what purpose this "token" was used,or make correction if the info i got is wrong ? Wear to all materials,wood,leather,fabric,iron on both front and the back of the shield looks in harmony well enough with the possibility of having quite a few century age . Built of iron pieces covered onto wood, strenghtened edges with iron plates, with weaved leather holding straps and hand pad. I have seen similar shields in international auctions with German coins described as the coins having been war trophies and getting nailed onto the shields by soldiers to commemorate the victory as a Turkish tradition, but simple brass tokens could have such a pretentious symbolism too? Perhaps it was more clever to spend gold and silver coins and to sacrifice just these tokens of the loot for the purpose
The shield looks practically not trustable in a battle, against muskets, swords,arrows.. The main idea of not only nailing the coins onto, but making whole shield was only symbolical? I have acquired 3 of these bucklers all quite similar in model and condition, two with German tokens and one with Ottoman coins. This is the best looking one. regards Last edited by erlikhan; 2nd May 2009 at 10:31 AM. |
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