rapier

[Jim McDougall]

Originally Posted by fernando

Jim, good point on the wire grip missing bars .
To be (more) clear, i wasn't presuming that the name on the blade was that of one of the "SAHAGUN's" but actually pretending to discard such probability; my approach was more to recall that these are the type of names that one wishes that they figure on our swords, despite the odds. In fact we know that the Sahagun(not Sahagum) family, father and three sons, Toledan masters originary from (de) Sahagun, all used the same mark, a shielded crown over S.
By the way Jim, could you please tell in what page of WallaceColl, you find (Nuremberg) marks similar to that of the sword in discussion ?

Thank you Fernando. Actually when I mentioned Sahagun it was from my own reference and I had overlooked you had mentioned it as well, or had not picked up on your inference. I always have such a hard time discerning things from pictures posted, seeing the S took me to Sahagun almost inherently.
I then thought of these Italian, later other European groupings of letters and symbols which became a widely known convention. As most of Europe typically followed Italian lead, and the posted wire grips seemed to me mostly a Spanish characteristic (thinking of 'bilbo's), with Spanish rule in Netherlands it had plausibility to that context.

The fact that Germany of course supplied many blades to sword makers there supported the notion of the city mark, but then the sword may have been to any number of city guard units in Germany using the similar geometric device in shield cartouche.

The markings are from Wallace Coll., Sir James Mann, 1962, p.684).
Obviously there is no exact match, but the convention can be seen in the geometric designs. Even slight deviations could constitute of course an entirely different entity.

The posts may have been removed or come undone when wire wrap unraveled as is common in weapons of this type and age. Often pulling away the wire would do that and turks heads would still be intact.