Thank you Zach for these photos!

Jeremy V. Krause wrote:

Thom Jason wrote: The catalog is in French unfortunately, and no measurements. It has pics of all the swords in the exhibit though. Do you happen to have the link where the catalogue can be purchased? Thanks!

Here: http://www.boutiquesdemusees.fr/en/shop/produ...boles.html

Zach,
Thank you so very much for sharing these photos, including the glimpses of the museum's architecture! There is no way I could get over to Paris anytime soon, let alone in time for this exhibition, so I am very grateful for this thread! I hope you enjoyed the City of Light in general as well.

Regarding the "sacrificial" Yeoman:

Julien M wrote:

I'm afraid it's a lost cause if you consider the number of visitor here per day, including kids...This yeoman will have to be sacrified for the greater purpose of educating people!

I think it is okay that that the multitudes are able to put their fingers on the blade, it is really the best way to appreciate the complex profiling of a well-engineered sword. I mean, the point is to help dispel the "crowbar with an edge" preconception, right? I suppose the museum could clean the thing more regularly, or supply cotton gloves, but I have another idea...
Let the poor thing get as crusty as it will. Then, assuming the sword is on loan from Albion, when the exhibition is over, Howy and co. can put the sword in the "moat sale" packaged with a copy of the exhibition catalog. A testament to what might be the first major exhibition to treat this group of artifacts with the proper due respect! Now there's a souvenir!

Cheers, All!

Thanks for the pics Thom, and good to "see" you again. :)

I agree with the idea that pictures like these draw people to the museum rather than keep them away because "they've already seen it."

Personally, now I know that the Childeric sword is on display there, I may have to visit it anyway, where at first I was planning to let it pass.

That Yeoman would be fine at the end of the exhibition if only someone would spend 5 minutes a day maintaining it.

It's a must see exhibit.

And good to see you too Paul. :lol:

Jeremy, I believe this is it:

http://www.boutiquesdemusees.fr/en/shop/produ...8xP3Bhcj02

Danny

I'm interested in seeing the video they had playing. I hope it will be made available on YouTube once everything is over. Or perhaps you managed to capture it as a part of your 2GB video walk-through?

It's already on Youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hlIUrd7d1Q&am...r_embedded

I purposely didn't include more than a glance at the video in mine in order to avoid any potential copyright issues.

Hi all


As an associate commissionner of this exhibit (and some of you here were already in the know), I'd be happy to answer any questions you might have about it - I could just look back through your posts and pick a few remarks here and there, but OTOH I wouldn't want to leave any aside (hough I started addressing a few points here below)


But before that, a few words :

The exhibit has been open since April 28th, and since then thousands of visitors have flocked to it. As dubious as some might have been in higher places in France, it seems the Sword is attreactive to quite a lot of people :). In fact, the staff at the Museum keep telling me about the raise in attendance they have since this exhibit is on, especially since my HEMA group, De Taille et d'Estoc, perform Historical European Martial Arts demonstrations in the very courtyard of the Museum on each weekend since May 14th (until early July - but the exhibits ends in late September).

For the European Long Night of Museums, during which (guess what?) museums stay open late at night, 4519 visitors went to the Cluny Museum (four times as much as the 2010 edition). We did four 30 minutes demos before hundreds of people each time :
[ Linked Image ]
And I must repeat here again how fortunate we are that these demos and exhibit are done in partnership with Albion Europe - showing HEMA with Albion Meyers, I.33s and Cluny (and also a Hersir) is indeed a treat.


Of course, as said by others, this exhibit won't teach you regular myArmoury people things you don't know already...though you might have surprises.
But I would add that this exhibit is like all others, akin to a tree with the objects as the leaves and the catalogue as the trunk and branches. Don't expect to find dimensions, measurements, minute details or descriptions in the book, however - such things were not possible due to many factors linked to the preparation and nature of this exhibit and the objects it shows. What you will find however is (within the space limits of such a publication) the current state of knowledge about the Medieval sword (and beyond). Please note that the French Histoire Antique et Médiévale magazine has also published a special issue about this exhibit, in which several articles come as complementary material to the exhibit and catalogue.
Unfortunately, the catalogue is in French, but the possibility for an English version is an official fact. If the demand is high enough, maybe, maybe the editor will agree to it.



As for the fight-books displayed : One is (not shown on pics in this thread I think) the BNF ms. fr. 1996 "Le Jeu de la Hache", another is the BNF ms. Lat. 11269 also known as "Florius de Arte Luctandi" (a probably apocryphal version of Fiore dei lmiberi's teachings, in full-colour), and the third is indeed this one :
[url]http://wiktenauer.com/wiki/Gladiatoria_(CL23842)[/url] though I wouldn't really agree with the 'gladiatoria' tag attached to it.

The videos playing in the exhibit were made by HEMAC members Daniel Jaquet and Thomas Schmutziger. Daniel is doing his PhD on Armoured judical fighting in the late Middle Ages and early Renaissance a the Geneva University, and will perform demos on armoured fighting at the Cluny on the fist weekend of July (he also did it last weekend, but it's too late to advertise for that, isn't it ?).

Since the vids are online now, I think you can feel free to post whatever you want (Thom and others). Provided you proceed with respect to possible copyright issues and the like, you know the stuff......

The finger marks on the 'playable' sword were probably made during the construction of the case, unfortunately. More worrying is the way people started to scratch away the leather covering the handle (some people even tried to nag the captions here and there). Maintenance of this sword would mean dismounting the case every time, and the security measures would not really allow it (or people would have to agree witht the museum closing at least an hour earlier, and the curator to be present at each and every opening of the case...for such is French law). But I'll try to do that at least once over the course of the summer.
I think we went for a Yeoman as it was the only sword readily available during the preparation of this exhibit whose cross guard would be large enough so as not to pass through the hole....Ideally, we'd have liked a longsword, but the basic (read : safe and practical) dimensions of the hole would mean a significant part of the sword (and cable) could go through, with the consequences you can imagine (theft being one of them).
But to me (to us), having an exhibit on swords without giving people the possibility to handle, to feel, to 'live' the sword would have been a nonsense and utter failure




..and I'll finish with this (for now) :

Quote:

What did they do, hire a real enthusiast as a curator (oh the scandal!)?

Well they didn't hire me as such (I'm not getting paid, such is France....) but as said above I'm a co-commissionner of this exhibit. Don't know if I qualify as a real enthusiast ;), but I've been working on it since 2007 *
Though I must say the 'real' curator of the Museum, the one who had this idea first and foremost became indeed quite enthralled with this swordy stuff. When the Albion Cluny arrived, it was near-impossible to have him let it go. I think it spent full days in his hand - but in fact this sword is soooo nice you hardly notice you're holding it.



So as said above, feel free to ask, and see you there over the summer maybe ?


Cheers

Fab


* Again, my most sincere thanks also go to Peter Johnsson, the Man you can't do anything good about swords without asking him first.

Hm did I mention the very room in which the exhibit is set is the Frigidarium of the old Roman baths of Lutece, both the oldest stil standing building in all Paris and the place where Emperor Julian the Apostate was raised on the Shield by his Preatorians ? The rest of the Museum being a late XVth century private hotel built for the Abbeys of Cluny...

Many thanks for the insider insights, Fab!
I'd say you guys did a spectacular job putting this together. :D

Thanks Zach :blush:

That exhibition looks superb!

Hi Julien

Julien M wrote:

Congrats on this fantastic achievement! I hope you are having a hell of a good time.

Merci :)

I'm not doing too bad, thanks. The demos were in fact close to awesome in terms of exposure both to HEMA and to swords generally speaking. I don't have the exact numbers in mind, but every week end more than one thousand people attended the demos, with a ot of them showing real (and I hope, lasting) interest in what we did.

Julien M wrote:

I'm not surprised our good masters were sceptical about the point of such an event in France...after all anything remotely related to martial culture is all too quickly disregarded as of little interest these days in the land of the thousand cheeses...

It seems the numbers of visitors for the equivalent week-ends has increased by 30% this year...can't say it's because of the exhibit/the demos, but I have my own view on the matter....

Julien M wrote:

Hope that you got the opportunity to document and handle the pieces at least?

Not really, unfortunately. And as long as the exhibit is on, they're out of anyone's reach.

Julien M wrote:

I'll try to make it to the capital before you guys pack away most of these splendid specimens. I'd really hate to miss this (but there is a high chance I will unfortunately).

Well, let me know, maybe I'll be around.

Julien M wrote:

By the way are you the one responsible for introducing the Oakeshott typololy into a museum environment? That's unheard of!

I guess I must be blamed for that too...


Thanks again :)

Cheers

Fab

Thanks so much for sharing these pics, Zach!