[William Knight]

I'm working with Maciej Kopiuch so that he can create a custom sword based on this sword in the Cleveland Museum of Art: http://www.clevelandart.org/art/1919.69

The dating/region is European, 15th century, which seems about right. In Oakshott terms, the blade is a Type XVIII or Type XVIIIa, similar to a number of examples from around the middle of the century, at least some of which are Italian. Overall it's another 'Family F' classic. But what's a bit different is the hilt - I can't find something exactly like it. I see crossguards that are fairly 'bar like' on their face - when you look closely a lot of mid 15th century swords like this one at the Royal armouries: https://collections.royalarmouries.org/object/rac-object-170.html the 'face' of the hilt is rather flat. But in these crossguard examples, (what Oakshott calls Type 9), the ends of the guard aren't full circles, they're kin of curl-shaped. In some other examples you see spherical ends, but in these cases the hilt is less flat. What's going on here?[/url]

[J.D. Crawford]

Nice find. Reminds me of XVIII.4 here: http://myArmoury.com/feature_spotxviii.html and in Oakeshott's 'Records'. But as you say the pommel on this one looks to be of an older type H or I. Could all or part of the sword be older than 15th c?