Skip to main content

Sword blade: O.23-1879

Object information

Awaiting location update

Maker(s)

Maker: Unknown

Entities

Categories

Description

The whole hilt is missing. The steel blade is narrow, straight and double edged, with a slight full-length medial ridge. Attached to the forte by five rivets are crude reinforces, terminating in slightly onion shaped ends. The tang is thick and of square section, and retains fragments of the wooden lining of the lost grip, as well as spots of vermillion paint.

Notes

History note: Probably from the Tanjore armoury, broken up in 1860 (see documentation: Elgood 2004).

Legal notes

Given by Robert Taylor, MA

Measurements and weight

Blade Length: 107.5 cm
Overall Length: 118.5 cm
Weight: 760 g

Acquisition and important dates

Method of acquisition: Given (1879) by Taylor, Robert, MA

Dating

16th Century
Circa 1500 CE - 1600 CE

Note

A label records this as an unnumbered object, but it is clearly one of the Taylor group. By elimination assigned O.23.1879, called on Taylor’s list a pata blade, Cambridge 1879: no. 13; as it retains a tang, this cannot be correct. However all the other detached blades also have their tangs.

Components of the work

Blade composed of steel

References and bibliographic entries

Identification numbers

Accession number: O.23-1879
Primary reference Number: 158330
Stable URI

Audit data

Created: Saturday 6 August 2011 Updated: Monday 1 October 2012 Last processed: Friday 8 December 2023

Associated departments & institutions

Owner or interested party: The Fitzwilliam Museum
Associated department: Applied Arts

Citation for print

This record can be cited in the Harvard Bibliographic style using the text below:

The Fitzwilliam Museum (2024) "Sword blade" Web page available at: https://collection.beta.fitz.ms/id/object/158330 Accessed: 2024-12-22 20:10:07

Citation for Wikipedia

To cite this record on Wikipedia you can use this code snippet:

{{cite web|url=https://collection.beta.fitz.ms/id/object/158330 |title=Sword blade |author=The Fitzwilliam Museum|accessdate=2024-12-22 20:10:07|publisher=The University of Cambridge}}

API call for this record

To call these data via our API (remember this needs to be authenticated) you can use this code snippet:

https://collection.beta.fitz.ms/api/v1/objects/object-158330

Sign up for updates

Updates about future exhibitions and displays, family activities, virtual events & news. You'll be the first to know...