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Gregory J. Liebau




Location: Dinuba, CA
Joined: 27 Nov 2004

Posts: 669

PostPosted: Thu 14 Jan, 2016 10:05 pm    Post subject: Croatian book provides (many) citations from myArmoury!         Reply with quote

Hello folks,

This fall I had the good fortune to spend nearly two months working and touring in the beautiful country of Croatia. In the historic city of Split I visited the Split City Museum, and purchased a large volume titled The Collection of Arms of the Split City Museum, or Zbirka oružja Muzeja grada Splita in Croatia, written by Goran Borčić. The book is bi-lingual and was published in 2012.

The arms collection of the museum primarily consists of antique firearms and associated accessories, weaponry dating from between the 15th-19th centuries, and an interesting selection of armour mostly from the 16th century. After I began reading the book, I was surprised to see a number of citations attributed to myArmoury.com! I'm finally taking the time to assemble them here... Below I will provide page numbers, relevant quotes and full citations.

Cheers!

-Gregory

p. 25 - "...The golden age of Romanic swords lasted from the 11th until the mid-13th century. They have somewhat longer crossguards and blades than the Viking swords, usually around 80cm. In simple categorization, we can differentiate between two basic pommel types, in the literature called the mushroom pommel or the Brazil nut pommel. However, in more precise categorization there are as many as nineteen different types amongst which some have their further subtypes. (20)

(20)Miller, Christopher L. The Sword Typology of Alfred Geibig. http://www.myArmoury.com/feature_geibig.php (2012-11-15).

pp. 25-26 - "The sword specimen from our Museum collection (cat. no. 1 - MGS 3456) is a typical example of the heavy medieval knight sword referred to as magna spata in the written records. A discoud apple-shaped pommel has a shield-like protrusion in the shape of a truncated cone with slanted sides, and in Ewart Oakeshott's classification this sword typologically belongs to type XIIIb and its hexagonal pommel to the 11 type, which was popular in the 14th and 15th centuries. (21) Arnow, Chad. Oakeshott, Ewart. The Man and His Legacy: Part II, pp 2,3. http://www.myArmoury.com/feature_oakeshott2.html

p. 26 " These early Grete Swords or Epés de Guerre are well known in the literature and often depicted in visual art. These swords were often believed to be of German origin, and for this reason were called Grandes epées d'Allemagne because of their frequent use in German 14th-century monuments. However, research showed that many Spanish monuments from the same time depicted this type of sword, as well as monuments in England. (23) Kelly, Patrick. Spotlight: Oakeshott Type XII Swords. www.myArmoury.com/feature_spotxii.html (2012-8-12).

p. 28, (30) is in reference to this Venetian sword in the myArmoury photo albums, which is used to confirm the dating of a very similar sword in the Split collection.

p. 30 "An almost identical type of rapier, differing only in the pommel form and the existence of a fuller on the blade, was identified as having been manufactured in Milan and dated to the period from 1610-1620 as the work of Iohannes Zuchinia. (39) Armi e Armature, Catologhi di Museo Poldi Pezzoli, 2, Milano 1980, p. 84, n. 491; Grandy Bill, Call to Arms, The Italian Rapier http://www.myArmoury.com/feature_arms_rapier.php (2012-10-5).

p. 38 "Skeleton hilt baskets are the oldest type of baskets, mentioned as early as the first half of the 16th and 17th centuries. The skeleton hilt basket has single, double or triple protective diagonal bars with no ornamentation, except in rare cases. (76) Oakeshott, Ewart R. The Sword in the Age of Chivalry, Woodbridge 1994; Oakeshott, Ewart R. European weapons and Armour: From the Renaissance to the Industrial Revolution; Robinson, Nathan. The Schiavona and its Infuences, http://www.myArmoury.com/feature_spot_schia.html (2012-8-7)

p. 208 "There is a breastplate in a private collection in the USA which is also decorated with a matching coat of arms and with a 'Marco Barbarigo' engraving beneath it. It is dated to the Victorian period (1837-1901) or later, esteemed as a decorative (or tourist) object of the salon, but definitely as a copy of a Venetian 16th-century specimen. (612) http://myArmoury.com/talk/viewtopic.2840.html (2012-4-5); http://www.myArmoury.com/talk/viewtopic.2579.html (2012-4-5).

(EDIT: There are a number of additional citations in the catalog segment of the book, but I had forgotten that it is only in Croatian! So, it's not very handy to transcribe as I've done above... I suppose I'll leave it at that!


Last edited by Gregory J. Liebau on Fri 15 Jan, 2016 7:59 am; edited 2 times in total
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Nathan Robinson
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PostPosted: Thu 14 Jan, 2016 10:11 pm    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Thank you for assembling these! I have the book as well and was happy and surprised to see those citations. There are a few other books that have had similar surprises, but generally only one or two mentions. It's a bit of a shock, as this was never the intention of this site. Things work out so strange sometimes.
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Gregory J. Liebau




Location: Dinuba, CA
Joined: 27 Nov 2004

Posts: 669

PostPosted: Fri 15 Jan, 2016 8:04 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Indeed they do, Nathan! It's nice to see websites cited in texts these days, though it's also something to be wary of... From what I can see Borčić was careful to select details from threads/features here that have solid academic backing.

As an aside (since I know you're interested in such things), there was an interesting trend in the museums throughout Dalmatia to overemphasize the importance of the schiavona in their local history, according basket-hilted weapons to the status of an officer's weapon, and presuming that many of them were earlier than most specialists would suggest. For example, a mid-late 17th century complex hilt with associated evidence from Venice, perhaps through a dated blade, might be thrown back to the late-16th century and turned into an "Oskuk officer's weapon." It was refreshing to see that for the most part Borčić seems to make amends for such notions in his book, which is by far the best that I came across during my travels related to arms history.

By the way, I've decided not to link all of the additional citations from the catalog because I had forgotten the main text of that section is only in Croatian! Wouldn't be as interesting, and far more tedious on my end... Cheers!

-Gregory
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Luka Borscak




Location: Croatia
Joined: 11 Jun 2007
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PostPosted: Sat 16 Jan, 2016 4:06 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Plenty of references to myArmoury and Oakeshott in a similar book about swords from the Historical Museum in Zagreb, Croatia. Also Croatian/English.
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J.D. Crawford




Location: Toronto
Joined: 25 Dec 2006

Spotlight topics: 1
Posts: 1,903

PostPosted: Sat 16 Jan, 2016 6:11 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

Nathan Robinson wrote:
Thank you for assembling these! I have the book as well and was happy and surprised to see those citations. There are a few other books that have had similar surprises, but generally only one or two mentions. It's a bit of a shock, as this was never the intention of this site. Things work out so strange sometimes.


This goes to show the impact that your site has had, Nathan. That's something to be very proud of.

And probably just the tip of the iceberg. I bet that many academics and curators use myArmoury as a reference but are shy about quoting an 'amateur' web-site in their formal publications.

-Doug
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Niels Just Rasmussen




Location: Nykøbing Falster, Denmark
Joined: 03 Sep 2014

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Posts: 828

PostPosted: Sat 16 Jan, 2016 7:41 am    Post subject:         Reply with quote

It seems Croatia is on the cutting edge of a scientific new thinking!
Realizing that dedicated amateurs might actually know a great deal on the subject.....
Congratulations to those cited and to Nathan for making it all possibly.

Even as an academic myself I have always been perplexed by this snobbery attitude as it is basically unscientific.
Science is after all the power of the arguments based on available evidence, not what name appears on the paper or where that person works! To argue otherwise is to appeal to "authority," which regress us back to a intellectual climate of the authority of scripture over freethinkers.

I can come with an archetypical story of academic snobbery from Denmark:
One of the most groundbreaking work in paleontology to ever come from Denmark that had truly world influence was in fact done by a artist with an amateur interest in Ornithology - Gerhard Heilmann. His "The Origin of Birds" (Danish 1913-16, English 1926) was simply the standard theory of non-dinosaur origin of birds, until John Ostrom's description of Deinonychus in 1969.
Despite his world renown in paleontology he was never accepted in the Danish academic community.


Source: https://40.media.tumblr.com/8ba4cc46f56b63f415748e6536e9f578/tumblr_mwgzz3aE191rmeji6o1_500.jpg
Gerhard Heilmann's painting of Archaeopteryx.

He is in Denmark still known as an artist, but almost exclusively for creating the former 500 kroner bank note called the "plowman" in 1913. So a 500 kroner bank note can still today be called "en plovmand", even after several other 500 kroner notes have been issued.

Source: http://www.akj-cbj.dk/Plovmanden-filer/image002.jpg

He also illustrated the works of poet and novelist Karl Gjellerup, that won the nobel prize of literature in 1917. [Gjellerup is also totally forgotten in Denmark, because he was considered "to German", so in Danish education you wont read a single line from him, but apparently his work "The Pilgrim Kamanita" is taught in Thai schools]
Only the small number of existing Danish vertebrate paleontologists have even heard of Heilmann's world importance in paleontology (though we know now he was wrong - birds are dinosaurs - thanks to Ostrom's discovery and later fossil finds).

So academic snobbery is really something that needs to be overcome for the sake of good science.
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