I saw this image in a text on book plates. Does anyone know of similar designed guards, or surviving ones that have actually been photographed?

Although I prefer simple and functional furnishings on swords, it is interesting to see the more bizzare looking specimens that appear to have actually existed historically.

---

 Attachment: 106.43 KB

Don't know where I pulled this from, maybe someone on this forum, if it was, please let me know so I can write it down on the file, thanks.

Not exactly a longsword per se, but this is a claymore in the Edinburgh Museum. (Musuem Replicas by the way just released a poor copy of it).

This is totally unrelated to the artwork, but it reminds me a little of an M1840 Medical Staff sword, which was a dress sword with no real practical usage other than ceremony:

I could never figure out why MRL decided to leave off a limb. It just does not make sense. :wtf:

It does seem quite odd to leave off something that significant. Perhaps to save money? Or maybe we'll never know.

Losing an arm does make it easier to hang on a wall. Presumably MRL expects most to be bought for display.

Forgive the ignorant intrusion. I think it may have been said before, as well, but how about it just being a display piece? It might simply have been intended to show what the craftsmen involved could do and was never intended for actual use. Or it may have been experiemental in the sense of "Y'know, 4 quillons would look impressive, why don't we try it?" So it get's made and it looks ok but they find that no-one can carry it to battle with 4 quillons. By extension, if it's a later "reproduction", they were probably just trying to see how bad-ass (to borrow an american tv phrase) they could make it look.

[ Linked Image ]
The sword of king Ulaslo II (Hungarian National Museum)
Note the dolpin crossguard
There is a good picture of it in the book Temesváry: Kardok

[ Linked Image ]

Jean,
In the pictures of the weird claymore, the fourth quillon casts a shadow of its own, so it can't be a shadow. Descriptions that have been published refer to it as having 4, not 3, quillons.

We at Museum Replicas want to thank everyone for their comments and photographs of the Claymore in the Edinburgh Museum. The photographs we used were based on a view of the sword that hid a quillon and showed what appeared to be 3 quillons. Because of your diligence we see the original had in fact 4 quillons which we verified. We have stopped production and are making the correction; we will re-introduce this item hopefully later this year.

We did want to point out that the curve in the grip is caused by the natural shape of the walrus tusk and is not distortion from age. The tang was made to follow the curvature of the ivory and we reproduced this with a traditional hardwood grip of the period since Walrus/ivory is illegal to procure and use.

Again, we really appreciate the comments. We are all students of history and we never stop learning or being appreciative of our patrons. We take constructive comments seriously, especially where history is being replicated so keep up the good work.

Ally Barnes

Hello Ally Barnes-

I wanted to add a comment to say that I'm absolutely impressed with your diligence.

Very nice.

Thanks, even though we cannot always respond to forum threads we still enjoy reading them and we certainly learn from them!