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Old 14th June 2018, 11:32 AM   #17
midelburgo
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Join Date: Jun 2005
Posts: 238
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Maybe there is need for a fast clarification about Toledo.

Toledo cutlers have been famous even before the christians recovered the city in XIth century. They continued functioning as a guild up to early XVIIIth century. Their medieval structure and methods had been very inefficient for a century by then. A Toledo blade could cost five times more than one by Solingen, and the quality gap had been diminishing. So they were disappearing.

Around 1760, king Carlos III ministers decided to rescue what was left under the patronage of the state. They gave contracts for standard models, each cutler working in his own workshop, until in the 1770s a new centralized building was established, La Fabrica de Toledo, in the city outskirts, and all the cutlers were moved there. Quality and production numbers were recovered. Between 1770 and 1900, the swords were marked with Fabrica de Toledo and the production year. When the Fabrica became a responsibility of the Artillery Corps, Fabrica de Artilleria de Toledo. Brass moldings started in the 1830s, decorative etchings workshop for officers was usual from the end of 1840s. In the 1860s the factory included in its catalog replicas of old swords and items for civilian market, hunting knives, letter openers... and souvenir wallhangers. The factory would continue making these items, adding small firearms ammunition up to 1980, when it was closed just after celebrating its second centenary. In the 2000s the old XVIIIth century buildings were recycled to house the University of Castilla-La Mancha.
The Fabrica archives thought lost for years, are still under the control of the Army.

Since the 1920s or earlier, cutlers in the old city started producing tourist pieces of poor quality. They were imitating especially the civilian pieces from the Fabrica. They could not mark Fabrica de Toledo, but they marked as Toledo. This market grew in the 1950s and 1960s. As swords lost importance in the military, even the few gala swords for officers, started being made by these workshops. The historical models (medieval Cid sword for example) used in these workshops were the high-quality copies made by the Fabrica, not the originals from the Royal Armouries at Madrid. For a hundred years they were making copies of copies of copies, without looking at the originals. In the 1980s they started adding Hollywood Movies weaponry...

In the 2000s a new movement for antique fencing in Spain started looking for a producer of the needed historical weaponry (mostly XVIIth century). Toledo was an obvious option, this has created among a few cutlers there an interest for old techniques and models, but it has still a low profile compared to the wallhanger market.

Last edited by midelburgo; 14th June 2018 at 11:46 AM.
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