Very nice and greatly appreciated. I am skeptical about the "Ming" attribution for meany of the village jian. People have been debating their age for a while, and the general consensus is there is no way to date them accurately. Phillip Tom and Artzi laughed at my attempts to date similar examples and any claims toward their being Ming. Such examples might be, but a later 17th or 18th century date is more likely. If I were to go out on a limb, I would call those early Qing, based on the fittings and blade styles. There is a narrow bladed example that may be earlier, but most have pommels and guards that are often attributed to the Qing. There is one wooden handled example that is in a Ming style but I would attribute it to of a type of wooden handled Daoist ritual sword frequently seen using Ming forms.
I am even less confident about any attempt to date the sabers. The blade forms certainly are similar to Ming depictions, but they persisted through the 19th century, and I see nothing that would definitively place the majority earlier than the late 18th c.. Conservatively I would place the majority in the early to mid 19th c..
If anyone has a good reason to assign better dates, please tell me.
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