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Old 5th June 2007, 01:37 PM   #12
Jim McDougall
Arms Historian
 
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Join Date: Dec 2004
Location: Route 66
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Hi Jeff,
Thanks again for keeping up on this ! You're right about the German blade and sword industry, which became more complex toward to latter 19th c. and even more so with WWI and so on. They became extremely competitive and the claims to the fame of the early makers was very much like the marketing of the present, with emphasis on venerability (or is it vulnerability ? so the king, queen allusions were very much as you note .

Fernando,
I agree, it would be disappointing and I am inclined to think the hunting sword concept went out some time ago, despite the obvious clinging to anachronistic tradition often seen in upper echelon gentry. It seems the 'hunting knife' superceded these (I keep thinking of Crocodile Dundee holding up that enormous Bowie!!!!).
Actually my suggestion of hunting swords drew more toward the size of this weapon, and hangers of this size were of course used by many specialized units such as artillery, engineers etc.
I am very amazed by the observation on the font! which is very convincing and it does seem to be unusually large, though I honestly dont know much on fonts or typeface and would like to know more about resources on that!
Its amazing how diverse and multifaceted the study of weapons really is, we never know where clues might turn up.

As Jeff says, please keep us updated OK Fernando?

All the best,
Jim
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