A FINE AND RARE SCOTTISH BACKSWORD WITH SIGNED BASKET-HILT BY JOHN SIMPSON THE ELDER OF GLASGOW, CIRCA 1690-1700, with tapering blade double-edged for its last quarter, formed with a long slender fuller running along the back-edge and a further shorter slender fuller on each face, signed 'Andrea Farara' and decorated with a flower on each face at the forte (light pitting), boldly formed iron basket-hilt of strongly fluted bars, incorporating an aperture for reins with a curved bar top and bottom, a saltire carrying a notched and cusped panel pierced with columns and circles centring on a rondel, cusped pierced side-panels and knuckle-guard en suite, the former each with ram's horn terminal, vestigial rear quillon signed on the underside with the stamped letters 'I.S' over 'G', bun-shaped pommel decorated with elaborate designs of fluting, retaining much early blackened and gilt 'Japanned' finish including a spray of foliage above the side-panels (small losses, areas of pitting), wire-bound fishskin-covered grip, and retaining an early doe-skin liner with red velvet covering (one velvet panel missing), 82.0 cm blade Provenance Robin Wigington, Poets Arbour, Stratford-upon-Avon Sandy Gordon, North Attleborough, Massachusetts, 1970 Literature William Reid, A New-Found Sword by John Simpson, in Scottish Weapons and Fortifications 1100-1800, D. H. Caldwell (Ed.), Edinburgh 1981, pp. 403-407. The strongly canted position of the hilt in relation to the blade suggests a late 17th century date and thus an attribution to John Simpson the Elder, who was admitted to the Glasgow Incorporation of Hammermen in 22nd August 1683 and had died by 1718. See Reid op. cit and Scott 1963, p. 22. For a related hilt in the collection of the Duke of Buccleuch at Boughton House see Batty, Norman et al, 1996 p. 27 no. 1:6. A further hilt by this maker, previously in the collection of Samuel Alexander, Kilmarnock was sold in this room, 7th December 2011, lot 157. Property from the Collection of a Distinguished Scholar and Collector