Good morning,
What I am getting at in conclusion is that Flayderman and the Mowbray archives waffle the Philly notes Bazelon based his 1992 article on. If I make it back to Hartfod in the fall, I'll chat up Stuart a bit at their book stall. With and in collaboration, the Mowbray and Flayderman archives embody their best work and guesswork being left to a minimum. That titles resets values and supposition (in my mind) to a minimum of absolutes and information.
In a previous post you link
http://www.nps.gov/history/history/o...ew/vol4-1d.htm
and the example shown is the typical horseman of American hussar hilts sans cast lion grips. This is exactly my point in referencing Neumann's expanses of that general type. To then assign cast lions as predominate and Philly cast is then lumping them into the whole. In that the lion is still somewhat available and used throughout the 18th century does not make Washington and other patriots less leery of claiming the lion pommel slots anything but non-regulation variants. Yes, long crude blades (ala Rose) and slots or hussar hilts are prevalent and often Philly based but the cast hilts are not.
A later analogy
Move on to the American Civil War and while the gothic baskets with spread eagles are often listed as popular for Federal foot officers and the blade as well as purpose fit the general mold, the regulation French patterns should not be confused with those gothic hilts while existing hand in hand with exactly the same blade decorations as well as the blades themselves.
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I have not read the Bazelon article. What I am regarding from your notes (including Flayderman's and Mowbray's earlier contentions) is that the cast lion hilts or just pommels and general pattern are easily accepted. To label the cast hilts in Philly and predominate in the revolution to federalist period is denial of both earlier work and a summation half a decade after Bazelon's apparent theorizing and Flayderman's later collaborations. My feelings and research really do point to the dearth of information group during the internet's growth which is still expanding expotentially.
Throughout that, the background historical information such as political trends. Import/export retail operations along with cutler and smith facts are also still growing but Philly has become a pretty open book by the time of Bezdek's compilations as well as the Medicus publication. None of that supports what seems to be alluded to here other than imported non regulation cast grip lions of private purchase by officers. By the federal period, the lion hilts are even less in demand with the eagles starting to overlap by 1790 with that trend lasting another half century, just as the British lion had been popular in the colonial period.
I have gone from accepting older absolutes and conjecture as better and more complete information surfaces. I find my personal focus a lot more refined to just a handful of eagle types but the trends and information accumulating crosses many other paths.
Have a great eve and day of merriment and we will likely purse this some more but my thoughts and yours have both been fairly stated to what I find a fair conclusion for now.
Cheers
GC