Thought you may like to see a medieval sword I recently purchased. Ivory grip & Pommel. 30" long. Just doing research. Any idea`s welcome.
Many thanks. Tony..

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The blade looks to thick...

Where did you aquire it?

Given the pentacle and what looks like the green man on one side, I'm going to say it's a modern piece.

M.

(edit: reassuring to see two more similar comments while I was typing this... )

I dont know, my gut instinct from every original I've seen and handled screams out that it's off in a dozen ways.

Mr Spanjer's comment is similar to my first reaction on looking at this earlier (I did'nt comment as no-one else had, and I could be utterly wrong and looking like an eejit), was that it was too thick.

not in the profile, but in distal. it could be the very dark contrast of blade edges to that central ridge, but it appears far too deep a cross section

on top of that, an ivory pommel, not metal, and what looks like screws in the tang. its all rather curious. do you have any information on its provenance, origin, etc?

reminds me of a few of those evil sacrificial type knives,
excellet thread on this site somewhere,
far too much iron for the wiccans,

I'm a complete hobbiest collector so my opinion is worth very little when it comes to period pieces. That said, it also appears to me that the piece is of victorian or newer manufacture and that it is primarily constructed with an intent to look old and mysterious/occultish to someone unfamiliar with period weapons.

I have no idea what it might be but it seems to lack the level of metal working skill and attention to detail often present in the real period weapons that I have seen. Everything except the work on the ivory seems to be rather carelessly put together. Its almost as if the blade and guard are merely a prop for the ivory grip. The grip itself also seems to be more important for its imagry than its function IMO. I think that the whole package seems to be put together to appeal to a preconcieved idea of what a old sword should be. I do not think that it is a particularly old sword.

However, this is all my very limited and absolutely amatuer opinion based on a few photos of the object in question. I'm problably far more likely to be wrong about all of this, than I am to be right about any of it. :cool:

Looks like a XV century long dagger with a modern handle, attached with two badly peened rivets.

Cross and blade look well made and period, pitting credible. Could you pls give out thickness at least at start of the blade, in the middle and near the point?

That measurements would give us good indication of a blade being real or not.

The patina looks authentic. I can't comment about anything else, but it's hard to fake that.

Grip is definitely not medieval but blade could be a large dagger or maybe shortened sword blade?

Don't know much about the sword but I do know that at least in the middle ages the pentagram (point up) was a christian symbol and it represented the wounds of Christ. But what that means for the rest of the sword not sure.

First impression (without more than seeing the picture briefly) is that it is the work of William Lloyd, still active and does lots of organics carving work. If not, certainly a brother in the arts. I don't know that he has ever offered aged efforts, or that no one has done so to his work.

http://www.lloydstudios.com/

Cheers

GC

Thank you all for your reply`s. Very gratefull.

i would concur that this piece seems to be a modern display/ceremonial piece. the wild man designs seem quite well, out of place for the time medieval time period. kinda viking-ish in form. and i agree about the sturdiness of the hilt. an organic material for a pommel wasn't around since the heyday of the gladii. and, on a note of the blade, it seems that the very thick cross-section is out of place on a sword of that profile taper (or lack thereof). with that profile you would be more likely to see fullers or so. correct me on any points that i am wrong, but that is to the best of my knowledge.

Another thing that looks suspicious to me is that the blade is shaped like a lenticular cutter, and yet the sword has a riser and no fuller. To me, it looks like someone was trying to make a 11th through 13th century type blade but didn't really know what they were doing.