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Old 9th April 2017, 03:00 PM   #2
Lee
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Join Date: Nov 2004
Location: Upstate New York, USA
Posts: 893
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First a caveat, I am straying quite a bit out of my comfort zone and you should not weigh my comments very heavily. Hopefully a forum member more knowledgeable about such swords will recognize exactly what your sword is and assist.

The blade appears to be very precisely made with a somewhat complex transition from a single-edged section just beyond the ricasso into a double-edged (one edge may be false) of flattened diamond cross section. From the markings and the cross section in the near half, I cannot help but wonder if this is a military blade from sometime in the 19th century even into the first decades of the 20th, when there was some revival of straight blades for the cavalry. The level and proficiency of the decoration and finish of the hilt does not come up to the standard of the blade. This makes me wonder if this might have been a composite made up in the late 19th or early 20th century when antique arms had a period of great popularity as decorations.

Now, why this should not be considered a final verdict: My first Scottish basket-hilt, bought in the early 1970s, is surely such a composite - like your sword, the blade is a very serious piece of work and more like a rapier blade than anything that should have a Scottish basket. And the basket is the military model of, if I remember correctly, 1828 - only half has been cut away so the sword would hang flat against the wall. Years later, however, I showed the very well regarded out-of-town dealer (where I had gotten the 'Scottish' sword) a proud recent acquisition from a gun show and he denounced and dismissed it as a worthless composite. Years later I bought a book in the same shop (pre-Internet days) that made it clear that my worthless 'made-up' composite was a great example of a Spanish colonial espada ancha.

So we will have to wait for the fat lady to sing.
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