How do you hold a sword up without tripping on it or hitting people as you walk? By wearing the correct suspension for your sword of course! This is a project from the summer that I've done some recent tweaking on. Sword belts and hangers are by far the most common thing seen in material finds and artwork for the mid to late 16th Century in Europe. Every now and then (I can think of three out of all the images I've ever looked at) you see an over the shoulder suspension represented prior to 1620. One of the folks I do Bristol with, really prefers something that is able to do both over the shoulder and at the waist for carrying his sword. He wanted something to wear that would work with both his soft kit and when wearing his armour without a whole bunch of unhooking and resetting sizes etc. I racked my brain for a while and took my inspiration from two particular images. The first, a picture of a Lieutenant in Tomas Lant's depiction of the Funerary Procession for Sir Phillip Sidney, seen here:
and the image of a hunter/keeper of hounds:
To this end I put together something that can be adjusted to be worn as a baldric, but also tightened up to be worn at the waist. The sword position when worn at the waist puts the sword at a similar position to what is seen with integral belt suspensions on medieval longswords and single hand swords.
Here's some pictures of it in the baldric configuration modeled by the ever photogenic Ed.
And a close up of the suspension itself.
From all accounts and purposes it works well while marching and on the move, so I consider it a success! I will try to get a photo or two of it in the waist belt position shortly.
