[Bill Grandy]

I recently acquired a late 15th/early 16th century rugger. Here’s a write up with pictures and stats.

https://thehemaists.com/2021/05/04/tools-of-the-trade-german-rugger/

[Chris Dayton]

Nice writeup, thanks for posting. The "tools of the trade" antique feature series is a great idea. Is that blade from the big dealer in Michigan? It looks familiar...

[Aaron Hoard]

Nice review - thanks for posting.

Things like this always make me think about what happened to the owner? Did he lose it in battle, or did it simply get lost in some mundane way? (like it fell off while riding his horse)

[Victor R.]

[Bill Grandy]

[Daniel Parry]

I must say I like that a lot in its proportions an functionality. I also like the fact that you, like me, enjoy buying streaks of rust. I think there is an interesting hiatus between early medieval and Viking streaks of rust and later medieval ones.

The former go for high prices and in many cases may not be original. The later period ones are numerous and largely untouched in river find or other condition and I find them wonderful. And they are largely ignored by collectors because they are not clean enough. They also have the elusive density (in terms of feel) and compactness of proportion typical of the 15th, 16th and 17th century pieces of various types I have handled or owned.

This is my favourite of mine below - I think late 15th century general use dagger and knife with reinforced point.

Sorry they won't attach because they are bigger than a passport photo. I will try again.

[Daniel Parry]

I will try and attach pics again

[Bill Grandy]

That’s gorgeous, Daniel!

I like to buy these more affordable pieces because my primary goal for collecting is to put them in students’ hands. So when I get the time, I plan on making a clear epoxy removable grip for this. The goal will be to have something that doesn’t affect the knife as an artifact, and also allows people to grip it as it was meant to be held. I need to play around with exactly how I want to do that.

[Daniel Parry]

I totally agree with that approach. I saw a collection when I was in Norway on holiday where they had put wooden grips (the museum assistant told me they were pegged on either side so could be easily removed) around Viking and Medieval swords next to recreations of the scabbards they would have had. It totally brings it alive and I saw that reaction in my then 7 year old son. It's funny he has grown up surrounded by old arms and armour but he refers to the swords without grip and just skeletal as 'dead swords'. Says a lot.

I am a big fan of recreations in museums. I studied classics at school and have had a life long interest in the Greek bronze age to this day and when I was at Oxford I went many times to the Ashmolean museum and there they have a good few cases of Bronze age stuff. I always remember when I went there in my first year and hey had the remains of a bronze age 'rapier' type long sword but beside it they had a recreation that someone had made with hilt of wood and bone and clean blade and a scabbard I was struck and always remember it because my parents are avid historians and I was dragged as a child thought every museum and monument you can imagine (I love it now but being told on a freezing, windy, rainy day as an 8 year old that I had now visited every iron age hill fort in England didn't exactly fill me with pride - I just wanted scooby doo) But I thought that recreation (and some others they had in the display case) was amazing - it brought the world I had studied through texts alive. And that's what you want whether you are teaching history or historical fencing.

One of my fondest experiences which got stopped by Covid was I went into my son's primary school when they were studying Saxons and Normans and castles and took a number of things like a Brazil nut sword (authentic according to several collectors, a major auction house and two museum curators but who knows.....), some broaches and amber beads and later medieval stuff like caltrops. I was worried that it would be boring for them but the teacher afterwards said 'I have never seen the bell for breaktime go and them not move'. It's amazing the effect original or recreative pieces can have on people's ability to visualise things.

My favourite from that class was talking about sieges and what would would do if you were going to be besieged (i.e. you need a source of water and food) and one of the little girls put her hand up and said ' You could make a really quick dash to the supermarket ?' Loved that but then that also created conversations about how middle ages economies worked - no factories or supermarkets, everything is cottage industry, children as young as them might be working in the family trade and not going to school.

Props are the key and with the aura that original objects have all the more interesting.

(PS also loved the questions about caltrops - thought they might be a bit gory for the kids but then one of them put their hand up and said 'Can you use them again ... like wipe the blood off... or would you need to buy new ones?' There was some conferring amongst the kids and they seemed to agree 'Yeah.... you'd want to buy new ones wouldn't you'