[Christian Henry Tobler]

Greetings all,

...and congratulations to Nathan on this new purchase!

I probably should just ask Craig this (and perhaps he'll answer here), but why is this piece called an English longsword, when it is based on a piece from Zurich and similar weapons appear on German knightly memorials?

Take care everyone,

Christian

[Craig Johnson]

Very observant my friend.

Few have noticed this point, the odd museum curator and such. The answer I am afraid is a bit mundane and one of those parts of the sword business that can be a bit strange.

I wish it had lots to do with a great historic tale and some half forgotten effigy in some dim corner of a little chapel. The truth is the result of the fact that when we are working on swords in the shop and developing new items they will have a tendency to pickup nicknames. In the course of this sword there were several different swords we looked at replicating one was a larger bastard sword version that we called the "Swiss", another was with a different detailing on the pommel and that was "Chris's Sword", the one we settled on we started calling the "English" sword as the Flemish art the detailing is based on was in the UK and in the Queen's art collection.

This carried through and when we were assigning a name to the piece in the catalog we stuck with "English" as a couple of people had seen the proto type and wanted it and we had referred to it as such when dealing with them. We did not have any items titled "English" thus it flowed into use more than some of our titles. This process was probably a bit to organic :-)

In the past we have had the opposite problem where we will call something by its shop name and them retitle it for consumption and it will take us two years to get adjusted to the new name. There are a few pieces were we have never really gotten it worked out and the item has two or even three names in the shop.

The titling of pieces is interesting as sometimes it is clear cut, say the Henry V sword. Other times it will be more general German Bastard Sword. It is amazing to me how the name can affect the sales of a sword. In the past I have seen swords that are nearly the same sell at dramaticlly different rates and often the difference comes down to what it is called. The funniest part of the business end of it is when you make a piece and title it with something you like and seems good and new and then you see some over seas producer pop up with the same name sometimes on a sword that looks like yours but in the funniest cases on something completely different and you can tell does not really fit the piece.

Best one was a while ago someone was ripping off the Henry V sword but had titled it the Black Prince.

Hope that answers the question and next round of titling I will have to be more on my toes :-)

Best
Craig