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A Very Fine Dutch Or French Silver-Gilt Hilted Small-Sword image 1

A Very Fine Dutch Or French Silver-Gilt Hilted Small-Sword image 2

Lot 70^*

A Very Fine Dutch Or French Silver-Gilt Hilted Small-Sword
Mid-Late 17th Century, The Blade 18th Century

29 April 2010, 11:00 BST

London, Knightsbridge

Sold for £6,000 inc. premium

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A Very Fine Dutch Or French Silver-Gilt Hilted Small-Sword
Mid-Late 17th Century, The Blade 18th Century

With tapering blade of flattened hexagonal section, the forte with wide central fuller along each side etched and gilt with whorled designs and with a central line of applied alternate silver florets and ovals, a crowned profile bust in an oval beyond, cast and chased hilt comprising slightly upturned double shell-guard decorated in relief on the inner and outer sides with Zeus in a chariot drawn by two eagles and a Classical warrior in armour in a chariot drawn by horses, each between naked demi-figures, against a pierced ground and with a grotesque mask above, quillon-block decorated on each side with a putto-head between demi-figures, a horned satyr-mask beneath, partly reeded arms, reeded rear quillon and knuckle-guard each issuing from the mouth of a monster, the former with terminal formed as a demi-figure in the round holding a bow, the latter with mustachioed grotesque-masks back and front centred on a standing naked female figure, globular pommel en suite, later grip bound with varying thicknesses of twisted gilt wire, and retaining nearly all of its gilding
79.6 cm. blade

Footnotes

A number of similar blades are recorded. One in the Royal Collection at Windsor Castle, one formerly in the collection of Stephen V. Grancsay, New York, another in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna (inv. no. A 2036), one in the Royal Armouries, Leeds (ex Seymour E. Lucas sale, Christie's London, 15 May 1956, lot 217), and others in the Victoria and Albert Museum. See Sir James Mann, Wallace Collection Catalogues, European Arms and Armour, Vol. II, Arms, 1962, p. 341, no. A671. For a very similar blade on a small-sword, formerly in the Dreger Collection, see Galerie Fischer, Luzern, 2 August 1927, lot 117

For a very similar steel hilt, almost certainly by the same maker and preserved in the Victoria and Albert Museum (Reg. No. 61-1947), see A.V.B. Norman, The Rapier and Small-Sword 1460-1820, 1980, pl. 102

Additional information

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