with slender tapering blade of flattened-hexagonal section, struck with the sacred trigram ‘IHS’ enclosed by a series of decorative marks within a short fuller on each face at the forte, border-engraved tapering ricasso enclosed by a blackened rain-cover with roped edge, blackened iron hilt (the colour refreshed in places), comprising a pair of slightly drooping quillons of hollow-triangular section broadening towards their pointed tips and each engraved with a pair of chevrons on the front, outer ring-guard en suite and fitted with a flat plate pierced with four heart-shaped apertures, diagonal inner-guard formed of a broad plate joined to the quillon-block by a heart-shaped thumb-loop, large faceted plummet-shaped pommel engraved with pairs of lines, and fishskin-covered grip, perhaps early, bound with slender iron bars between shaped collars, 105.38 cm blade

Provenance

An Important English Private Collection

Literature

The Fourth Park Lane Arms Fair, 1987, p. 6.

This form of hilt is recorded from the second quarter of the 16th century and remained popular at the somewhat conservative Dresden court until the early 17th century. Other swords of this type are preserved in the former Electoral Armoury Dresden. Five further swords from this group are listed in the Princes Schwarzburg Armour inventory of 1708, and a near identical example in the Victoria and Albert Museum (inv. no.M.46-1947). See Hilbert 1998, p. 69; Norman 1980, pp. 75-76; Henkel and Kessler 2017, p. 160 and Hayward 1963, no.3c.