Posts: 2 Location: Serbia
Thu 24 Sep, 2015 11:21 am
Hi Peter, as Mark said that should indeed follow swords from Western Balkan, most finds come from Serbia and Bosnia with one example from Bulgaria. But hold your hopes, while blade and scabbard could be original, crossguard, hilt and pommel really look like poorly executed modern period reconstruction, although I'd like to be convinced otherwise. Owner or seller in my opinion probably tried to achieve pronounced knob style of pommel commonly seen in late 15th and 16th century
schiavona swords from Western Balkan and less ornate Venetian copies of those pommels style seen in 16th and 17th century, unlike to shallow knob styled pommels of early to mid 15th century. While crossguard copies the shape of sword from Bosnia(unknown location) shown in this picture, number 6
http://take.ms/e3Wlx
Take a look at this two examples, on the left, late 15th-16th century sword from Serbia-Vrsac, which shows pronounced knob style of bronze pommel, and on the right sword from Serbia-Belgrade with transitional shallow knob styled pommel which derived from the general shape of late 14th century "Serbian sword", predecessor of schivaona (more on that can be found in excellent book by leading expert in this kind of swords Marko Aleksic; "Mediaeval swords from southeastern Europe"):
http://take.ms/0JIQF
Developed form of this pommel can be seen not only in bronze, but also in steel/iron variants like this example from Serbia-Belgrade (there are more, no need to post additional pictures):
http://take.ms/78moU
Another surviving scabbard has been found in Serbia-Uzice:
http://take.ms/sjw1h
And in Bulgaria-Sofia, Mark posted it already, so here is only one photo:
http://take.ms/rsYvL
Another sword from Bosnia, listed as Dalmatian sword was sold at auction by Faganarms, Inc.
http://take.ms/QQ3NW
Sword Mark listed as unknown location is from Bosnia-Foca.
One characteristic for all of this swords is U shaped crossguard, like this examples from Bosnia-Sarajevo
http://take.ms/NKrDu
Bosnia-Pocitelj
http://take.ms/SdDzw
Serbia-Belgrade
http://take.ms/PtGdY
There are plenty more examples, no need to post them all since we are focusing here on developed knob styled bronze pommels. Hope that I helped a bit in solving your mystery.
Best regards.