A while back I received a very interesting commission for an Italian dagger from the 14thC. All we had to go on was this one painting and neither of us knew of something like this in a museum or in pictures. We speculated that it had the standard whittle tang construction of a bollock dagger (which it resembles a little) rather than a basilard (which it also resembles). We concluded it was a carved hilt without a metallic guard or pommel/cap and that is about as much as we had.
I later found a dagger in the Wallace (I733) that has a similar pommel end, though the guard is more bollock dagger and the knife is 200 years later. I then found this picture in Armi Bianchi Italien which is 15thC at least and has many of the same characteristics. To this end I constructed the dagger as best I could by squinting at the various sources and trying to fill the detail and this is what I came up with.
The original was probably Ivory but we went for a hilt of ebonised Holly and the scabbard fittings are brass and the dagger has a blade length of about 9". The tang button is rather curious, but on the Armi picture there does seem to be a long tubular button so I went for something similar.
In the end this can only be conjecture but I hope I have got somewhere close to what could have been.
Regards
Tod
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14thC painting
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Painting detail
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Image from Armi Bianchi Italien
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