Hi All,

I'm trying to educate myself a little on Victorian era reproductions of medieval swords. This could also include historical blades that have been re-hilted in the Victorian era with new fittings which I understand was a common practice of the time. I am looking for example pictures and other details to help me gain a better understanding and feel for reproductions from this era. If you have any related information or pictures please post it.

Many thanks in advance for the help!

19th-century cinquedea from The Complete Illustrated History of Knives, Swords, Spears & Daggers. I imagine the reused parts make this one a lower-end repro/fake.

Sorry about the blurred edge, it's a thick little book and I wasn't able to press the scanner lid down because my computer and scanner are in two different rooms.

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Wow what a frankenstein! Thank you for the example. That's exactly the type of example I am looking for.

It was suggested in another topic(link 1 below) that many of the swords in the Reichsstadt museum in Rothenburg Ob Der Tauber are actually Victorian era fakes. Having gone very carefully through the pictures shared by Niels Provos (see link 2 below) I would have considered nearly all the blades shown there as true originals. To me they seem to show an appropriate condition for their age which is consistent on all parts of the piece. The blade forms and hilt shapes also appear to match. That being said there are a few that I could pick out as potentially suspect so I thought this would be a perfect set of examples to pick from and analyze. If you are interested, have look though the images in the link and post what you think. Let's see if we can pick out the fakes!

Link 1: Decoration on 11-12th Century Hilts
http://myArmoury.com/talk/viewtopic.php?t=384...047f9bf93c

Link 2:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/nielsprovos/albums/72157630586189982

I think for the period I look at, if you search quality auction houses' (Christies, Bonhams. Sothebys and others) websites for old auction listings (often online) and look for items 'in the style of' or 'composite' that can come up with examples (depending on how the word composite is used - some people use it as all period parts but not all originally together, some as a mix of parts which may or may not be all period) . Never tried it with medieval swords but may be worth a try.

Daniel

I mentioned in your other thread that others have said the Reichsstadt museum weapons are suspicious.

Here's what I think about the pictures you show above. Note that I'm no professional and don't have hands on experience with actual artifacts. My knowledge comes from many years of going to museums, reading every book I can get my hands on, and spending too much time looking at pictures on the internet. As well as collecting modern replicas from reputable sources.

When I look at the weapons at these museum, they largely seem fine in themselves. But these are suspicious factors:

- so many ornate and beautifully preserved swords (including grips, decorations) compared to the best museums in the world.

- the decorations and inlay often seem to protrude, which (if originally present) would seem most likely to be lost with wear and time. The many examples of well preserved Viking and medieval swords I have seen tend to have just faint residue of the original decoration or inlay, if any at all.

- there is a high prevalence of gold inlay (or outlay!) on the Viking and high medieval swords. That is not wrong in itself, but silver would have been more common. It's like they hit the jack pot of kings and emperors.

- there are certain vague stylistic similarities on the decorations between some sets of weapons.

One of these in a museum perhaps would not draw suspicion, but so much of it?

On the other hand, as I said the weapons themselves seem good, and I don't see anything obviously wrong with the aging patterns. If these are entirely fake, they were done by a master or masters of faking. Which makes me wonder if some of these are real artifacts that got into the hands of someone who decided to 'spice them up' with additional decoration or new inlay etc. to make them more appealing or valuable.

Those are the impressions of this amateur.

I would agree that some of the inlay looks a bit off on many of these pieces. It's that aspect of them "standing up" which stands out. I also question the heavy use of gold in the medieval examples.

There's a good chunk fake in Rothenburg, there's also quite a bit of real, and also some questionable pieces. The whole collection should be approached with caution. I got to examine a lot of the collection hands on, and do think some are real, as well as some of the daggers. The problem is that it's really scattered. Some of the fakes are really good, and some are just awful and obvious.