Reproducing a French Medieval Sword from the Wallace Collection

Hey guys, Nathan from Arms & Armor. Today I want to show you our French medieval sword. This is a single-handed sword. The original dates to the last quarter of the 14th century, and this is another piece that is a replica of a existing historical sword that's in the Wallace collection. It's catalog number A460. We actually had the chance back in the 90s, my business partner Chris Poore was over there hanging out with David Edge, who was the curator at the time, to make molds of the pommel and cross of this sword that then we've used as the basis for our recreation. Now Oakshot wrote about this sword as a just a brilliant example of the 14th century one-handed knightly arming sword. It is a large arming sword, blade more than two inches wide at the cross, tapers down to a fine point. Now the original, when you look at it, which was a river find, has one side that's corroded, another side that's really scratched, but when you look at the edges of it, it looks like over the course of its life its profile probably changed a little bit. It might have been a type 18 blade initially, that was essentially sharpened into a type 15, but we've reproduced it as it exists currently in this type 15 blade. This is a sword that would probably have been used with a shield as a knightly polearm, not polearm, knightly sidearm. You'd use it from horseback, you'd use it on foot. It has significant presence, so this sword weighs 2.9 pounds, but it moves really nicely in the hand. It does what it's supposed to do really well. When we reproduce this from the original, there are a few things that we have to do. So the original pommel, if you look at it in the pictures, is pretty asymmetrical. It's got a dip on one side. Since we reproduce this from a mold of the original piece, we essentially try to minimize that asymmetry to a certain extent, but it's certainly still there. It's one of the things that gives this sword such an authentic and historical feel, is that it's not turned on a lathe. We don't machine this. Instead, we've tried to reproduce it with that real deep feel of the original. The cross, too, has these lovely downturned quillins that are just super iconic of the 14th century. The original appears to be French. It probably is, although it's a little hard to say. It's got this inset in the pommel, which may have been decorated originally. It's hard to say. The patination on the original in the Wallace Collection is dark on the pommel and cross. It probably wasn't dark like that during its use. This is either a kind of corrosion that occurred when it was in a river for hundreds of years, or something that was put on to preserve it after it had been found that's darkened with time. We reproduce it often with blued furniture, so it looks like the original does today. We can do it bright. We do that frequently. This one has a mottled oxblood leather grip on it, which is an option you can take a look at on our website. Now, an interesting thing is that the original, you can see in this picture, the pommel is cocked. It's turned fairly substantially. We mount it straight, of course. Now, there's going to be a bunch of debate about whether that pommel being skewed to the side was on purpose or not. It's really hard to say, since that sword was used heavily in its life and then spent hundreds of years in a river, and then underwent some restoration after it was discovered and put in a museum collection. We really don't know, right? So, there are some theories out there. For example, Roland Warzecha is a proponent of the idea that twisted pommels allowed the sword to fit your hand, and that may well be the case. It also may well be the case that pommels on an iron tang aren't that hard to move around on period swords, and so it may have just happened, may have been an accident, may have been on purpose. We don't know. One of the things we decided to do is to mount it as symmetrically and straight as you can with an asymmetrical pommel. So, that's a choice we've made in reproducing this sword from the original, right? Leaving it straight. We've never held one of these. We should find a way to pick it up, because this is just a super iconic knightly sword that would have been in use during the period of the Hundred Years' War. So, a whole bunch of our favorite historical knights would have had something like this or had to fight someone with something like this. It's a fearsome sword, but it's also really quite an elegant piece. It's one of my favorites, so check it out. Thank you!