Adam Simmonds wrote: |
(snip)
I guess the tendency to classify can be a tricky and clumsy exercise if undertaken with limited knowledge of the range of individual types one would seek to put into distinct groups. (Snip) Apologies if I seem a recent convert preaching to the choir! Regards, Adam |
This was a lesson I had a really hard time learning. I approached swords with a very modern, very "class driven" mentality. A sword could be this thing, but not that thing, and in any event, it would be "some" thing, some distinct and classifiable thing. What do we call a single handed, curved sword, with a stirrup guard, having a blade of some thirty inches in length, with a wide fuller? A cutlass, a cuttoe, an NCO sword, a short saber, a saber, a sword? Well yes, or no, or it depends.
Here's another link to a sword that (to my hideously inexperienced eyes) closely resembles yours, from the French musee infanterie, dated to 1734.
http://www.musee-infanterie.com/objet/558-epe...re-briquet
best,
Lewis