you move around in good company
Dear Thomas,
I am glad to hear of your work. Peter Johnsson is a man of really original thinking, have you read his article "One Single Wholeness of Things -- the Geometry of Medieval Swords in the Wallace collection" in T. Capwell (ed.) THE NOBLE ART OF THE SWORD (London: Wallace 2012)? Yes, I agree that handling the weapons to determine how their dimensions affect their balance in the hand is essential for understanding. Too many collectors and writers think they know all about a piece from merely looking at it, and thus we have misleading info in books, and historicism which has no basis in reality. This is especially true in the area of oriental and ethnographic weapons, in which a lot of people seemed focused on superficial things like decoration.
Back to your saber, at least we know the blade is most likely "right" (this I say from images alone). Would be interesting to polish a section of it to determine the layering structure and heat treat. I have done it on a number of Chinese, Korean, and Indochinese blades and the results can be quite striking on the better examples, especially 18th cent. and previous work.
Regarding the fittings on your piece, one can say that they are most likely a historicism in the style of the period ca. 1750 until the end of the Qing in the early 20th cent. The fashion is called "yuanshi" or rounded style, because of the elliptical section of the hilt and scabbard, the flattened globular pommel, and the rounded chape of the scabbard. These elements start to appear in the regulations for court regalia, the HUANGCHAO LIQI TUSHI , compiled by order of the Qianlong emperor, in 1759. Earlier, the style was the angular type (fangshi) which had quadrangular cross-sections and a squared scabbard end, plus grips that were usually straight.
Philip
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