Collectibles or Cultural Heritage?

[Pertinax]

Originally Posted by RSWORD

Each sword, knife, shield, spear, etc is a tangible link to the past. Each one has a story to tell. Sometimes the story is shrouded in mystery. Not much information, if any at all, will pass down with the object. Through attempting to learn more about each object, in turn, I have learned more about other countries, cultures, traditions, conflicts, decorative techniques, etc than I ever did in school including my college years. That has been one of the most rewarding aspects of being part of a sword's journey. I have met some of the most interesting people that share similar interests that I never would have had the opportunity to meet. I treasure those moments.

So what is their worth? For me, it is not monetarily. It is unraveling the story to learn insights into a period of time lost to history. It is to ponder how it was made. Why was it made. What was its purpose. What was its journey from the time it was made until it found me. What will I learn from it. Who will I meet and get to know because of it. How will I take care and what information can I pass along to the next steward. Their worth is something personal to each individual and that, in of its own, is important.

I fully share your thoughts.

Every collector of antique weapons has his own motives and preferences.

For me personally:

- weapons have always been the highest achievement of creative, technical thought and progress in any era (unfortunately).

- as a history buff, I study the era, region, and people to whom a particular item belonged through the prism of ethnographic weapons.

Very often, unidentified or incorrectly attributed items come across, and that's when the most interesting and exciting part begins - an attempt to unravel their origin and history. And this is obtaining and studying a lot of information, communicating with the same caring and "sick" people as I am. This can take a significant amount of time, sometimes years.

Each item in my collection is carefully attributed, and I make a detailed description of it, in addition to technical characteristics - the era, country, people and everything related to this item. And if the item finds another owner, then he also gets my description. Thus, I hope that the time spent, efforts and knowledge gained will be preserved and passed on by relay.

As for outdated books and versions, they certainly need to be reviewed. Not so long ago, it was not possible to obtain and exchange information so quickly. Researchers of the past spent months, or even years, on this.

As for the general academic or public audience, what prevents them from taking part in discussions on forums? Is it beneath them to communicate with "amateurs"?

Unfortunately, there is now a tendency for interest in historical and ethnographic weapons to decline on specialized forums; very few new participants come. And if they do come, they ask, "What is this?"

[naturalist]

Good day Mr. Alan,

Yes they do, the golok lovers have been proposing the idea of golok as cultural heritage.
I have seen the movement around 4-5 years ago, i don't have the knowledge when they start this movement.
But i knew that one of my friend went to Switzerland for that purpose.
Here is the tshirt of last week event, got it one.

[Jim McDougall]

It would be impossible for me to not be compelled to write my thoughts and perspectives on this topic after an entire lifetime of passionate (=obsessive) study on the history and development of swords and many areas of arms and armor, without my usual tirades.

However here are some salient quotes and items which have always inspired me and seem to parallel my own thoughts on these pursuits.

One of my favorites, Sir Richard Burton in opening lines of "The Book of the Sword" (1884),
"....the history of the sword, is the history of humanity".

"...they convincingly explained that rather than being mere accessories, weapons are in fact themselves artistic creations that reflect larger stylistic tendencies of a period"

from Bruno Thomas & Ortwin Gamber, in "Jahrbuch des Kunsthistorischen, museums in Wien 1937-1955"

This of course recognizes that even the less decorated or embellished weapons often reflect important elements of the scope of material culture established in cultures, traditions, religions and even superstitions.

Joseph Lepkowski said in 1857:
"...show the connoisseur the arms of a people, and he will tell you about its culture".

My personal introduction to this quest came as a boy, probably of course from the films of swashbuckling heros, historical dramas and seeing the fascinating use of arms in such settings. Through the years as I acquired various items, each represented the context and period I passionately wanted to study...each became an icon of the actual time and events depicted in those venues as I held them.

They became not just old weapons, but my own guides into history itself, and they had such stories to tell, by inspiring me to look deeper and deeper,
cerca trova.....seek and ye shall find.

In the words of Confucious...
"...I was not born knowledgeable, I am devoted to antiquity, and am quick to seek knowledge".
Probably paraphrased, as found scribbled in my ancient notes, but the point is made.

Virtually all these old weapons became lifelong friends, and I still learn from them as research never stops, as can be seen by my usual barrage of posts on many of them. They are case studies of decades,
A good example, along with others found on European Armory forum, if those interested would visit,
" Old Scottish basket hilt blade mounted in Indian Pata".

This illustrates how such a blade found use entirely incongruently in the weapon of another culture, and how historically this pairing is so important.

Another case was with an old British cavalry saber from the Napoleonic wars became over a generation later used by volunteer forces to defend the Vatican during the wars of unification in Italy in the 1860s.

I had no idea of these inherent factors when I acquired these weapons over 50 years ago, but gratefully I kept them, as if compelled to look deeper. This for me is the joy of the weapons I acquired.

While others are drawn to aesthetics and artistic beauty in decoration; some to the collecting of certain forms, variations, cultural traits and many factors as they choose favored fields, my area is history. For me, the darkly patinated, rugged old warriors are history incarnate, and full of stories....just like this old timer

[Bob A]

Sir James Frazer, anthropologist author of the monumental study The Golden Bough described the basic principles of magic: sympathetic magic and contagious magic.

Sympathetic magic is based on the principle of “like produces like,” while contagious magic is based on the principle that things which have once been in contact can continue to have an effect on each other even after they are separated.

"Magical thinking" has been derided in our more technical age, though annoyingly enough, the outer reaches of physics has conjectured that on a very basic level, things once in contact continue to affect one another.

For my part, I've come to collect objects which are exemplars of cultures that no longer exist; they establish a connection between my consciousness and vanished times and places. They range from a Luristan bronze sword some 3000 years old, to Naga swords and spears, remnants of a culture only recently dissolved into the 21st century.

My Naga collection is perhaps my most extreme example. Having bought a nice Naga dao from Artzi years ago - because Headhunters! - I was led to the books written by Ursula Graham Bower, whose introduction to the Naga people brought forth an incredible story of hidden connection with a people of whom she had no previous knowledge. She was so strongly influenced that she spent years in Nagaland, writing two books on her experiences.

Of course, I found and treasure first editions of her books, signed and inscribed to a friend of hers (another example of contagious magic), a biographical study, and a comic book (!) in which her experiences leading a Naga troop against the Japanese was luridly described, though not as accurately depicted as one would like.

Her immersion in that culture, and her writings and work within the culture, garnered her the T.E.Lawrence Award for her anthropological studies.

All things are interconnected, if we have the inner sight to observe the web that ties the universe together, in its infinite complexity.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ursula_Graham_Bower