The EARLY MAKERS TRADE MARKS thread... lost and partly restored.

[Jim McDougall]

Originally Posted by toaster5sqn

Hullo all, I've just joined this forum. Although my own collection is extremely limited (1) as New Zealand is not a great place to find antique swords I am an active member of the local HEMA club. As part of the club I have been organizing trips to the Auckland War Memorial Museum to view their collection, sadly hidden in the basement since they reorganized the displays for the WWI centennial.

So far we have correctly identified a number of mislabeled swords and provided additional details about even those that were correctly labeled, as a result they are keen to have us back and are getting much more relaxed about letting us actually handle the swords.

So for your own pleasure and any information you can provide let me show you some of the markings we have discovered.
A 17th C Spanish style rapier 106cm blade, weighing 1188g with a balance point at 5cm. The fuller contains a series of what appear to be astrological signs terminated with some form of anchor mark.

Glad to have you here, and well done on the work of your group identifying weapons and seeing that they are properly labeled. It is most important to those of us who have spent many years studying arms and armor to do that very thing, and we've been doing it here for well over 20 years.

As you have noted, what appears to be a makers(?) name appears in the fuller and it was often a Spanish convention to interpolate astrological and or occult symbols with inscriptions to imbue magic potential in effect to the blade. The 'anchor' was also a device which was used at the fuller terminus or to end an inscription on a blade in a punctuation sense.
These are always interesting as there are nuanced variations in the elements of these cross style devices mostly in the numbers of branches/bars .

As Fernando has noted, Germany was most avid in using copies of these as well on blades they made often with spurious markings and inscriptions from Spanish and Italian makers.

Often on blades there were unusual groupings of letters which may have been acronyms for phrases or invocations, while names copied in Germany may often be misspelled or improperly used.

[fernando]

Originally Posted by Jim McDougall

...Often on blades there were unusual groupings of letters which may have been acronyms for phrases or invocations, while names copied in Germany may often be misspelled or improperly used...

Jim, this is the reason why i have suggested that, more adequate assessments may take place when photos of each side of the blade with the complete inscriptions are shown.
Probably you didn't read my post .

[Jim McDougall]

Originally Posted by fernando

Jim, this is the reason why i have suggested that, more adequate assessments may take place when photos of each side of the blade with the complete inscriptions are shown.
Probably you didn't read my post .

Actually Fernando I have learned to read your posts very carefully so as not to infringe on your assessments. My attention was to the nature of the inscriptions and acronyms or names in them, which was what was being queried.

I saw no need to say more regarding matters involving which side of the blade they were on or if they were connected etc. as you had already (as you have emphasized) mentioned it.
My response had nothing to do with photography and preferred postures or images, and described the content of inscriptions in a general sense.

I did not say more on thoughts on the sword itself as this thread is on markings, not sword identification, and I almost suggested a separate thread, but that is your department.

[fernando]

Jim, should i would humbly reiterate that you didn't read my post or, for the matter, what i meant to say. The inscription in the one side of the blade as posted is not fully shown (so it seems), reducing in such case the possibility to interpreter its actual contents, whether a name or other. A picture of the other side would let us conclude how its inscription would be associated to that in the side posted, like the completion of a name (first and last), the allusion to the city of provenance (Toledo or Solingen), some religious theme .. or even a blank.
Therefore i was expecting that further thoughts on this issue were much better placed (only) after the thread author contemplate us with the requested pictures. Unless of course you or some other member were able to decipher the whole thing with the partial image available.
Obviously and so far the subject at stake is the marks in the blade, and not the sword itself.

[Jim McDougall]

Originally Posted by fernando

Jim, should i would humbly reiterate that you didn't read my post or, for the matter, what i meant to say. The inscription in the one side of the blade as posted is not fully shown (so it seems), reducing in such case the possibility to interpreter its actual contents, whether a name or other. A picture of the other side would let us conclude how its inscription would be associated to that in the side posted, like the completion of a name (first and last), the allusion to the city of provenance (Toledo or Solingen), some religious theme .. or even a blank.
Therefore i was expecting that further thoughts on this issue were much better placed (only) after the thread author contemplate us with the requested pictures. Unless of course you or some other member were able to decipher the whole thing with the partial image available.
Obviously and so far the subject at stake is the marks in the blade, and not the sword itself.

I do appreciate your humble assertion that I am not capable of reading your post , but I would point out again that I was addressing the typical CONTENT of the inscriptions often found on blades (in general).............I was NOT trying to decipher this one.

Obviously the inscriptions on blades often differ from obverse to reverse, and this can definitely impact the entirety of the inscription if you are trying to decipher it. Thus, your request for a full complement of images of BOTH sides of the blade (which I understood) was perfectly understandable.

My point was that 'inscriptions; (in general) comprise names, phrases, invocations or acronyms, and within these are often 'magic' symbols interpolated within them....as seen here. This was a statement I could easily make WITHOUT seeing both sides of the blade as it pertained to blade inscriptions in general.

[toaster5sqn]

Thank you all for your kind remarks and the additional information.
Here as requested are additional photos of the inscriptions on the right and left of the blade, we're still trying to improve the quality of the photos we get from these visits.

[fernando]

Originally Posted by toaster5sqn

... we're still trying to improve the quality of the photos we get from these visits...

That would be an excelent idea . Also placing the photos all in the same direction will help discern what the inscriptions are all about, specially with such 'encripted' cases. I will now open a new thread in the regular discussion forum, so that a further audience may have a say at this.

http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/showthread.php?t=27163

I am still convinced that the inscription is about a smith's name and a city; something like "Pedro de Toro in Toledo" comes to mind but, this is just a guess. One thing you should check on is the presence of a smith's mark in the ricasso, close to the tang, behind the hilt. Toledan masters often strike their personal mark in that area.


.

[Jim McDougall]

On Spanish blades it was quite common to see the name of the maker and his place of work placed in the fuller, but often certain letters were replaced with astrological symbols or magic associated glyphs. This type of embellishment was believed to imbue certain talismanic potential (and quality endorsement) to the blade along with the makers name.

In many cases, as I previously mentioned, names were misspelled, and in other cases, wording seemed incongruent and in effect 'jibberish' as they made no sense. These were cases of 'acronyms', which are first letters of words in phrases, invocations and such which may have had special arcane meaning to certain individuals or groups at the time.

Such 'encryption' was common in Spain because of strong beliefs in magic, occult and superstition as well as the mystic dogma of the Kaballa associated with Jewish Faith, which was prevalent as well. The talismanic properties of these beliefs and followings in their ciphers, glyphs and symbols were important talismanic additions to blades in inscriptions.

A makers mark at the ricasso is always probably the best potential for identification of a blades maker, however those of prominent smiths were of course widely copied. On that point, only comparison of the style and character of the blades by that maker and with provenance will best assure that identification.

Again, as this thread is focused on blade markings and inscriptions I wanted to add my thoughts pertaining to these, and thank you for the added photos which better illustrate this blade's examples.

[toaster5sqn]

The reversal of direction of some photos is to differentiate the left side from the right, all photos of the same side face the same way.

Robert

[fernando]

Originally Posted by Jim McDougall

... A makers mark at the ricasso is always probably the best potential for identification of a blades maker, however those of prominent smiths were of course widely copied...

Sure thing, Jim; but i take it that such marks were not (at all) so much copied as written makers names.