Gosh, my wish list for books goes on forever. The Mowbray eagle title has a lot more information in it than just the galleries of the Medicus title with crisp succinct attributions. Mowbray (as I'm sure Bazelon's article is) took some time for both hard notes and speculation Some of my earlier posts while maybe sounding harsh do go to how Mowbray describes foundries in Philly and the cast hilts specifically.
As I am also an avid tracker of the Osborn weeping eagles as shown earlier, the definition of castings is not necessarily and absolute of origin for the assembly of the swords, or indeed the castings themselves. However, the cruder grips and longer blades do fall out of the norm for a lot of imports and that does lean towards the American side of the fence, while still not being conclusive as to manufacture. All quite definitely meant for American use, as with the sword of this subject. As with some other deeply ringed or spiraled grips, I also have thought them as "must be American" until seeing some of the same patterns turning up in Birmingham work. As mentioned, I am not one to ignore that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence but something etched in stone (such as so and so was casting these grips) or in a city's journal would lead to a hard conclusion.
It is that one is happy with an acquisition that is the most important. The sword does look like it was assembled, as the guard and handle look to be different metals All good points for some of the parts being American made.
Cheers
GC
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