Right now I am on a quest to find some good examples of late 16th century German rapiers/sideswords, Basically, what Joachim Meyer would have called a rappier. I want a good antique example to inspire a semi-custom practice rapier/sidesword. I'm looking for the type of sword a normal, mid to high-class civilian gentleman would have carried about with him and worn in court in Austria or Germany during the latter part of the 16th century. I have found many great examples of military reitschwerts and early rapiers that seem to have German blades and Italian hilts, but what I'm very curious about is if there were some distinctive local civilian styles of hilt in the German states.

Civilian rapiers before 1550 are also welcome since I would assume some swords from earlier continued to be used.

Thanks for the help :).

You can find some 16th century rapiers in the Recent Auctions section of herman Historica - http://www.hermann-historica.de/gb/index_alte_auktionen.htm

I don't know for sure which all of these are Germanic and not all fit your description, but this should at least get you started.

Thanks for the pictures. I've already completely gone through all of the Hermann Historica auction records with pictures I can in my search for what seems to be an elusive thing. As for the museum photographs, they are interesting. I think I recognize them, are they from the Musee de l'Arme (forgive the lack of accents) in Paris? While the photos are awesome for examples, the only problem is I'm not sure which weapons are which. So far my impression is that all of the swords that don't have a very distinct Saxon-style military hilt on them ( Bruhn-Hoffmeyer type Group VIIb single-handed swords, basically) are all Italian, or at least look Italian to me :p. While I know it seems that plenty of Italian hilts seemed to be imported to Germany during the 16th century and beyond, I still wonder if German cutlers didn't come up with some of their own unique designs, besides military hilted swords, of course.

It looks like the search continues. Thank you for the help nonetheless.

Well, this is a little later than what you're asking, but here's a sword from my collection that's from 1640ish, is German, and would be exactly the type of rapier that Meyer was using:

http://www.myArmoury.com/talk/viewtopic.php?t=19689&

Bill, the 1640s sword you posted is interesting. Looking back on the photos posted earlier, it actually seems to be a very common hilt style. Perhaps this is a good example of that local civilian style I was looking for? Still, I wonder where the other hilts are, such as the cross-hilted swords with either just a side-ring or two side-rings and a knuckle-bow found in Meyer. Was that just artistic license for simplicity's sake? Were they actually illustrating more military-style hilts?

On that note though, are there any good resources for rapier hilt typology available (A.V.B. Norman's work for instance) on the 'net? As much as I would love to get my hand on a copy of "Rapier and Smallsword", it seems that very few libraries have it and it's prohibitively expensive to buy.

Nice pictures! Can anyone confirm which museum they are from?

Here are some pictures from the Army Museum in Delft, which also contain some 16th C. rapiers.
http://1501bc.com/page/leger_museum_delft2/index.html

Sam N. wrote:

On that note though, are there any good resources for rapier hilt typology available (A.V.B. Norman's work for instance) on the 'net? As much as I would love to get my hand on a copy of "Rapier and Smallsword", it seems that very few libraries have it and it's prohibitively expensive to buy.

"Rapier and Smallsword" is being reprinted by Ayer Company Publishers for about $50, I think.
Their site: http://www.ayerpub.com
I think this is a direct link to the book, but their website is a bit quirky. http://www.ayerpub.com/Product.asp?ProductID=...&Res=T

I ordered and received mine a few months ago, and I think it's a really good buy for the money, even if trans-Atlantic shipping was a bit steep.

Norman is in reprint? :eek: That's BIG news, but there's no listing on Amazon.co.uk, and the Ayer site is currently broken. You can have my money, folks--just let me give it to you!

Ayer have been selling AVB Norman direct for a number of years (since 2006). I bought mine direct from them a couple of years ago, for £30-odd + shipping. Bargain, particularly when I saw the price the original A&A versions are. Invaluable book - everyone should have a copy!

Julian

The pictures that I posted are all from Musee de l'Arme except for the last which is from the State Museum in Copenhagen.

Greg