Lunaman
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Post by Lunaman on Feb 19, 2012 5:09:04 GMT
Hey all, During the same journey last spring where I visited The Cluny Museum in Paris and The Tower of London and The British Museum and the Victoria&Albert Museum, I also visited the Wallace Collection. The Wallace collection is a quirky little museum near Baker Street in London (of Sherlock Holmesian fame) that was once the home and personal collection of the wildly eccentric Richard Seymour-Conway, the 4th Marquess of Hertford. He amassed an enormous collection of French 18th century paintings, elaborate furniture and a huge variety of arms and armor, and left both the collection and his mansion to his illegitimate son, Sir Richard Wallace. His widow bequeathed the collection to the nation after his death in 1890, and the Wallace Collection is now a quirky and charming place to spend an afternoon wandering around, free of charge. Many oft-replicated historical swords and arms have their home here. Anyway, I snapped a few photos of the swordly stuff and thought I'd share them here. (Click to enlarge) I forgot to snap any photos of the exterior, but it's a big fancy house that's been converted into a museum. The arms and armor rooms wrap around the left side as you enter and are divided up by broad themes. (These glass cases are horrendously difficult to photograph through, so excuse the image quality) The first room was of "Eastern" weaponry, and had bits from places all across Asia: Dig this jade-hilted tulwar and these yhats and things. First knock-your-face-off-awsome sword for me. This shamshir is the sword of Ranjit Singh (1780-1893). The hilt and scabbard mounts are solid gold. The grip is walrus ivory. The blade is damascus. And no, I don't mean it's pattern-welded or simple folded steel, I mean the real deal. Honest to goodness authentic wootz. Crucible steel. ...yea. have a nihonto or two while you're at it. Other single-edgers in this room: more in a moment....
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Lunaman
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Post by Lunaman on Feb 19, 2012 5:31:38 GMT
Onward to Euro stuff as we move into the next room. MAIL! This stuff is more badass than you probably think. I adore this next sword. The proportions just stop you in your tracks. Heavy scarring, but the edges are well-taken care of. Oakeshott thought this type XV might have started as an XVIII and had its shape changed by years of re-honing. A&A makes a replica that I'd love to own one day with fittings blued to this deep dark color. Oh, speaking of Oakeshott, here's the sword Albion named after him! Or at least, they named their reproduction of this hollowground beauty after him. A&A and Kris Cutlery both make swords inspired by this HUGE two-hander, and it's inspired a couple of Peter Johnsson's blades from his personal workshop. I'm going to stop linking to repros because the Wallace Collection is like this and I'll just have a million tabs open tracking them all down. Anyway, this sword is massive and elegant. Bit of armor to break things up: A German mace! You know, A&A makes a nice replica... Rather well-know fishtail pommel type XVIII with a slender but sturdy and scary blade. A&A made a one-off repro once, and I believe it was one of the pieces that inspired the Albion Burgundian... 'Nother familiar face. The glare was murder on the case containing this very-well-known swiss saber, but I did my best. Betcha can guess what company made a great custom repro of this. A beautiful ear dagger. Tod's stuff made a superb repro inspired by this piece recently. Cinquedea's and falchions, oh my! A&A makes a repro of the ornate double-fullered monster. more in a moment...
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Lunaman
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Post by Lunaman on Feb 19, 2012 5:43:51 GMT
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Lunaman
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Post by Lunaman on Feb 19, 2012 5:55:16 GMT
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Lunaman
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Post by Lunaman on Feb 19, 2012 6:14:11 GMT
Forgive me this brief indulgence. I fell in love with the size and shape of the blade on this sword, and have taken several pictures to try to show details and the distal taper. It's so very nice. This seems completely reasonable. Cannon! There were an AWFUL LOT of guns in the last room. I mean, A WHOLE LOT. They aren't my area of interest, so I didn't take pictures, but trust me, there were a bunch! SO MANY, you guys. So many. Here's the last few blade pictures and some final thoughts: The Wallace Collection is a nifty place. I've been there about four times and I can't wait to go back. It's not very large (for a museum, that is, it's pretty impressive for a house) but there are dozens and dozens of gems packed in there. I have pictures of only a fraction of the blades in that space. And that's just with regards to arms and armour, there are rooms full of crazy-awesome furniture and paintings and treasures in every nook and cranny. It's a really special place. I don't know how to end this, so here's a picture of Tower Bridge I took, which is nowhere near the Wallace Collection (not London Bridge --that's the next one over and it's boring). Thanks for looking. --Luna
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Post by Warlokk on Feb 19, 2012 6:21:07 GMT
These are absolutely fantastic... so cool to see the originals so many of the swords we can get are based on. I was really excited to see that town guard sword, now I know what my first sword, the Windlass Munich, is based on. Not quite as sweet as the A&A version, but it's a start Thanks for posting, just amazing stuff! God I have to get to England one day...
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Lunaman
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Post by Lunaman on Feb 19, 2012 6:35:30 GMT
Thanks, mate, happy to share! England's definitely a great place to visit.
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Talon
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Post by Talon on Feb 19, 2012 6:47:00 GMT
thanks for posting these zach,im still constantly amazed at the skill that our ancestors had,no modern machinery and heat treating equipment and they still made things that we struggle to emulate today,i've never seen the wallace collection in person,i need to fix that this summer
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Lunaman
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Post by Lunaman on Feb 19, 2012 7:25:26 GMT
I'll drink to that, Dave!
As for visiting the Wallace, definitely go for it. Take the train down some day when the weather's nice. After you browse through all the sharp and shinys it's not too far from Regent's Park, which is a swell place to wander around. One of my favorite parts of the city.
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Sean (Shadowhowler)
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Post by Sean (Shadowhowler) on Feb 19, 2012 7:41:21 GMT
Gah... :shock: The Writhen sword... I just made a mess all over my keyboard...
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Lunaman
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Post by Lunaman on Feb 19, 2012 7:46:35 GMT
Understandable, sir. It's all rope-y swoops and curves everywhere. Damn nice.
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Post by Lukas MG (chenessfan) on Feb 19, 2012 7:49:23 GMT
Awesome!! Thank you very very much for going through the trouble of posting all these pics, Zach!! I can see someone getting inspiration from this... (other than Gus who really seems to like your pics )
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Lunaman
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Post by Lunaman on Feb 19, 2012 8:01:49 GMT
No problem brother, happy to share. Much better than for me to just leave them in a folder somewhere. Hahahaha, true! *edited for atrocious grammar*
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Post by WEWolf on Feb 19, 2012 8:47:14 GMT
These pictures are great, it's almost like being there. OK, I lied, it makes me want to go there and I envy you like crazy, but thanks so much for sharing these photos, they are awesome. Your captions are great, too, when words fail you (the ever eloquent Lunaman) then you know you're looking at sword art.
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Post by Deepbluedave on Feb 19, 2012 9:39:52 GMT
Awesome Luna great photos there.
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Post by chuckinohio on Feb 19, 2012 9:56:33 GMT
A600, how have I not paid attention to this sword before? Cheese and rice man, that piece is undoubtedly the coolest thing I've seen this year, bar none.
Can one even immagine the monetary outlay involved in trying to assemble a collection of that magnitude in todays world? Even if one collected only reproductions of the various pieces, you would need the GDP of Luxembourg to get close to that size and scope, just in the edged weapons.
Good stuff Zach, you managed to get some great photos despite the conditions.
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Post by Odingaard on Feb 19, 2012 14:10:47 GMT
This is an epically great post here with a ton of good photos and info - probably one of the best threads ever on SBG. Thanks for posting! The only thing I can really add myself here about going to London is: If you have not been yet, you really need to make a trip there sometime!
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Post by Todash on Feb 19, 2012 15:03:39 GMT
WOW! That was awesome. Thank you for taking your time to show us the pictures. Some of those swords...WOW!
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jhart06
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Post by jhart06 on Feb 19, 2012 15:46:06 GMT
I'm honestly fairly well floored. That's a lovely collection in that museum, thank you for sharing!
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Post by Kilted Cossack on Feb 19, 2012 15:52:24 GMT
Yeah, pretty much what everyone else said. Crazy gorgeous stuff there. The Medici falchion finally sold itself to me----the A&A pics don't do it justice. What I found interesting were the presence of yelmans on some of the falchions and sabers, to say nothing of the gold/ivory/wootz slasher: so pretty you'd ALMOST hesitate to kill someone with it. I shudder to think of the man-hours that went into those pieces.
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