View Single Post
Old 28th August 2014, 11:28 AM   #21
Matchlock
(deceased)
 
Matchlock's Avatar
 
Join Date: Sep 2008
Location: Bavaria, Germany - the center of 15th and 16th century gunmaking
Posts: 4,310
Default


Quote:
Originally Posted by Shakethetrees
I got this about twenty five years ago in Normandy, in a small town I cannot remember as I was just passing through on a day trip from Paris.

It is inscribed "YL" or "VL", and is a little over 19 inches along the top from the edge to the heel, and is 15 inches from the heel to the butt of the haft, which appears to be oak and full of worm holes.

The haft, or what's left of it, is loose in the socket. It is roughly pentagonal at the socket.

The form appears to be very old, but I am interested in hearing what everyone has to say.
Hi Shakethetress,


You sure shook - no; not just the trees: YOU shook the WOODS, the very moment you spotted and acquired that fine battle axe, manufactured within the (then) borders of the Germanic areas (German: in den deutschen Sprachgebieten) during the High Gothic period, 13th to early 14th century!
For its Viking stylistic formal predecessor, please cf.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_axe
(the one on top - see attachment).

This item is of a very rare and elegantly wrought type mostly, and wrongly, just termed a 'beheading axe' in English; it was far more than that, though - both actually and originally. Most of all it. was a battle axe, made for the fight, and meant for the killing - when it all came down, when it was man to man, face to face, axe to ... whatsoever.

CONGRATULATIONS, you made it!
It has been, and will be yours - for decades.
It belonged to generations before our time, for about 700 years, and it will belong to somebody else after it being with you.
All that collectors can ever be is just curators -
for a moment in time, which is our lives.

So we should be glad, and responsible, for being granted that chance.

T
he worst kind of curators like us will turn out to be the actual and final caretakers! of those soulless but innocent items.
We can literally rape them, acid-celan them, ruine them, dematerialize them, finalize them.
Just because we can.
Just because we think that they are ours.
They are not.
They belong to the universal cultual heritage of mankind.



If you feel that what is still left of an originally much longer haft may have been with the head for a very long span of time, leave it as it is, or lengthen it.
The original wood should be either ash or oak, and you should use the very same type.

You can make it whole again.
You can heal it.
You both earned it, the axe and you.


And please do send as good and detailed photos of that item as you can take. If you wish to, just send them privately.
I'm looking forward to seeing them.

I will also search for images of actuallc comparable axe heads but they are very rare to find.

All I can do for the moment being are two attachments concerning one of its typological and stylistic followers, dating to the Latest Gothic period of ca. 1500; that item was sold with Hermann Historica's, Munich, 19 October 2005.
That head, of course, was in a state of excavation, crudely cleaned and overpolished.
Nothing I would never even consider to touch.


Best as ever,
Michael
Attached Images
   

Last edited by Matchlock; 28th August 2014 at 05:21 PM.
Matchlock is offline   Reply With Quote