Side sword with Victorian chiseled hilt?

[10thRoyal]

Originally Posted by ulfberth

these 3 are all good , the schiavona looks complete and undamaged, the North Italian naval sabre 17th c has a nice blade, its pretty rare and looks nicer than most, the cup hilt is probably late 17th or early 18th c it has a nice colichemarde blade, more details of the gaurds , grips pommel and blade would be nice, these seem to be pure and unaltered items.
Here is a picture of a similar rapier as the one you bought, this particular one has the two guard rings intact and has the original pommel, it was sold at auction 11 years ago and described as 19th c but it was absolute completely all original.
kind regards
Ulfberth

It's great to hear that there were some legitimate diamonds in the rough that I found. The rapier was under a literal pile of "made in Toledo, Spain" souvenir swords. I'll have everything in hand by Wednesday and can send more detailed pictures then. I forgot that I had two additional images of both the cup hilt rapier and Italian saber.




I was honestly worried about the blade decoration on the saber at first. It looked too much like arsenal tulwar decoration. But I later found multiple examples with similarly janky designs carved into them. The pommel cap is interesting. I associate that style much more with 18th and 19th century sabers.

On another note, do y'all have any idea if there is any significance behind these shapes on the rapier grip and quillons? Just the fact that it is repeated multiple times in different spots made me wonder if it was associated with anything. Or it's just a metal design that looks like a pretzel with zero special meaning.





Thank you again to Ulfberth and Mr. McDougall, y'all have a level of knowledge and desire to share that knowledge that new comers to the field can aspire to, myself included.

[ulfberth]

the naval sabre has indeed a later grip and pommel cap, the decoration on the blade reminds me on Italian blade decoration of the 16th c however on your sabre it looks similar yet different, not sure what to think if it.
The repeating shapes on the rapier is a good sign and i have seen it before, its more a baroque type design.
Here are some pictures of a cup hilt with a colichemarde blade, they are rare and different from the small swords colichemarde blades which are between 80 and 90 cm long while these rapier blades are between 100 and 115 cm long.
This particular one was hexagonal cross section hollow ground on the first wide part and after the fuller it changed to diamond cross section hollow ground.
kind regards
Ulfberth

[10thRoyal]

Originally Posted by ulfberth

the naval sabre has indeed a later grip and pommel cap, the decoration on the blade reminds me on Italian blade decoration of the 16th c however on your sabre it looks similar yet different, not sure what to think if it.
The repeating shapes on the rapier is a good sign and i have seen it before, its more a baroque type design.
Here are some pictures of a cup hilt with a colichemarde blade, they are rare and different from the small swords colichemarde blades which are between 80 and 90 cm long while these rapier blades are between 100 and 115 cm long.
This particular one was hexagonal cross section hollow ground on the first wide part and after the fuller it changed to diamond cross section hollow ground.
kind regards
Ulfberth

That is a beautiful sword, is it yours? I'd love to match the maker's mark to a time period. Do we know if the colichemarde started on small sword and were applied to larger format rapiers or was it the other way around? And I never considered the size difference in the blades. Looking back at the photos of the cup hilt coming to me, assuming the planks in the floor are two inches wide, the blade would be about 38in to 40in long so roughly 96cm to 100cm. I really appreciate the fact that this is not simply a small sword blade on a rapier but was scaled up for the application.


And I found one example of the kind of decoration I had in mind when I saw the naval saber. This came from a Christie's auction.

[ulfberth]

i had it in my collection untill 2021, the colichemarde type blades are in general 18th century and found on small swords, however earlier variations were used in rapiers in the last quarter of the 17th century.
The blade in your rapier is ca 1600 - 1650 the running wolf on the blade is German Solingen Passau but the stamps seem North Italian, i have not found an exact match yet, there was alot of export of these blades to other countries.

[awdaniec666]

A brief reminder that these sabres were not only used on the sea.

[10thRoyal]

Originally Posted by awdaniec666

A brief reminder that these sabres were not only used on the sea.

i think for just about any other sword of this type you be 100% correct. But this one may be a little different. Kind of. Sort of. Its complicated. After some additional research, I think this blade may need it's own thread.

Ulfberth's comment on Italian naval sabers led me down a rabbit hole of naval pattern schiavona's, Fanti del Mar was one word that popped up on a thread from this website. From there I found a number of examples of schiavona's with guards identical to the one on mine, except with completely different pommels and completely different blades.





Finally I found one that gave me a bit of a eureka moment, below is an image of a closeup of a guard of one of a marine Schiavona with a Venitian arsenal mark on the guard, the second is my sword:



And there it is! A (probable) Venetian maker's mark on my own sword. So what I have is a guard from one of these Venitian marine swords, with a storta, falchion, dussack, etc, etc blade. So you are both right I believe.

[ulfberth]

Good Find 10th , that is the Venetian arsenal mark , its found on some schiavonas to, your blade could be variation used in this type and the curved blade is common on naval swords. I always liked these, they show character trough simplicity and even tough they are simple they have a certain elegance about them.
kind regards
Ulfberth