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Old 24th July 2012, 02:29 PM   #33
Matchlock
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Join Date: Sep 2008
Location: Bavaria, Germany - the center of 15th and 16th century gunmaking
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Quote:
Originally Posted by sioume
Thanks Michael for explanations.
So how someone can recognize a blade made in Passau and one with a wolf mark on it on it?
What differentiates them?

Thank for helping
Best
Alain

Hi Alain,


As Ben has pointed out in the meantime - thanks, Ben, and welcome here - differentiating between original Passau wolves and their manifold copies is virtually impossible.
I guess that as time passed, some 500-400 years ago, less armories were ready to pay the considerably higher prices charged for 'real' Passau blades claimed to have been imported from that Lower Bavarian city.

It seems to have become generally accepted in weaponry that saying 'Passau wolf' implies 'Passau style wolf'; the same applies to 'Solingen' wolves.
For a couple of decades, this lead arms historians to call many of those wolves 'contemporary fakes'. I think that that the neutral term copy would be more appropriate as nothing like a copyright existed in those historical times.


Best,
m

Last edited by Matchlock; 24th July 2012 at 08:31 PM.
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