Patient 0 for Longsword Belts with Short Straps

[Sean M]

Most of the modern scabbardmakers for late medieval swords keep copying and recopying the same few designs. One of their 'standard models' has a waist belt, two short straps which run from the back edge of the scabbard to the small of the back, and a hidden strap and buckle at the mouth of the scabbard which the tip of the sword belt is threaded through after the waist belt is buckled in front. Often the short straps are wrapped three times around the scabbard.

Maciej Kopciuch makes these, Mateutz Sulowski too, Tod aggressively pushes them on his site and YouTube videos, Jens B made one for his late 15th century kit.

Most of the other standard models of replica scabbards are based on famous finds and tutorials posted on the web years ago: the scabbard of Fernando de la Cerda (d. 1270) in Burgo, Spain with its belts split and threaded through the leather cover (tutorial by Peter Johannson on Ye Olde Gaffer's website), the scabbard of Sancho IV el Bravo in Toledo in The Sword in the Age of Chivalry plate 9, and the scabbard mounts with two rings on the locket and one ring on the back edge 1/4 of the way down the blade from Westminister Bridge in London and the tomb of Cangrande della Scala in Verona.

However, the design with a waist belt and two short straps on the back edge is very rare in art, especially in detailed art like effigies and brasses, and I do not know of a scabbard like this which survives. So who created one which everyone since is copying?

[John Vernier]

Donatello's statue of the condottiere Gattamelata, c.1447-53, in Padua, has a sword mounted along these lines, although the current state of the bronze belts, separate pieces from the main body of the statue, makes it hard to understand how exactly they were originally placed at his waist. the ends tied around the scabbard are clearly of the type you are looking for.
http://catalogo.fondazionezeri.unibo.it ... 1&slide=12

[Rene K.]

You can find this type of scabbard straping in the art of Albrecht Dürer, for example on his knight from 1494.
Also a second type of attachment is shown often in art of this time, and this is a simple belt that is wraped around the mouth of the scabbard, so that the sword is hanging straight down.
In my opinion the first time the type witht the wraped slings was first published to the scene in the book of Gery Embleton, The medieval soldier.

[Sean M]

Thanks John! This style of suspension appears across a long span of time, but in any one decade it seems rare. And my rolodex of sources for art runs out in the early 15th century.

The oldest candidate I can find is BNF Français 343 folios 47v and 64, but most of the scabbards in that MS hang upright with no slings.



Someone on MyArmoury pointed me to the brass of John Cherowin and the Montefeltro Altarpiece by Pierro della Francesca, but those are different than most of what people are making today: they seem to have three short straps/slings not two plus the end of the waistbelt.

And danke sehr Rene! Gary Embleton and the Company of St. George are very influential, and until recently most people learned to make scabbards from other people or from books.

[Sean M]

The Trinity Altarpiece in the British Royal Collection and Signorelli's Conversion of St. Paul remind me more of the Montefeltro Altarpiece than the furbishers' "standard 15th century sword sheath." Someone interested in that period could track down the photos of the St. Florian which Mac copied but I can't spare the time.

The way St. George has hung his Italian mitten gauntlets on a thong over the cross of his sword is a nice touch.

[Harry Marinakis]

Rare in art? I found plenty of examples in art during my research. I was looking at scabbards from c. 1500.

Most of the scabbards with this type of suspension do not show the 2nd critical buckle.

I never copy anyone else's scabbard because almost all scabbards made today are wrong. I always use primary sources for my scabbards.

[Sean M]

Rare in art? I found plenty of examples in art during my research. I was looking at scabbards from c. 1500.

Harry, I know of 3-5 works which show scabbards worn at an angle with two slings between 1360 and 1430, and its often "one scabbard out of several hundred" not "every scabbard in this manuscript." I looked all the way through Effigies and Brasses, The Sword in the Age of Chivalry, and Toby's book and I could not find many more.

It could be that by the c. 1500 there are more examples, although I am not sure that Dürer is showing the design which most of the modern scabbardmakers offer. My medieval research is pretty focused on the period from 1360 to 1410, but I searched art up to 1450 and this design is very hard to find.

I never copy anyone else's scabbard because almost all scabbards made today are wrong. I always use primary sources for my scabbards.

Yes, that is the point of this thread: who or what are all these other scabbardmakers copying? It can't be that they all picked a similar interpretation of a very rare style of scabbard independently.

When we make something which is not quite right for the place or time we are trying to represent, its usually because either there is an artifact we are copying (the short hose from Bocksten and Greenland) or because someone early on sussed out the engineering problems and nobody since has done the same for a design which is more representative.

[Tom B.]

Sean,

I also suspect that for most first time scabbard makers the leather wrapping suspension is far more accessible than making some sort of latten mounts. You know that is exactly why I did it when I made a scabbard for my longsword a decade ago.

[Sean M]

Tom, that could be, but it still raises the question of who worked out this design in particular and convinced people that it was "good enough" for the late 14th century. It has some subtle details, and many of the scabbard makers with access to a coppersmith or a foundry emphasize it over what we usually see in late 14th century and early 15th century art.

Someone without metalworking skills or money to hire someone like gaukler could try something like Ralph de Knevynton's scabbard (left), it looks like a short belt with the buckle and a long belt wrapped around the scabbard side by side.

[Harry Marinakis]

http://warfare2.netai.net/15/Froissart- ... -f292r.htm

[Sean M]

Thanks Harry! I think those archers in the Bruges copy of Jean Froissart's chronicle (BNF Français 2643) are wearing a 15th century solution: a waistbelt, with a slanted belt running from the right hip to the front edge of the scabbard, and two short straps running from over the left buttock to the back edge of the scabbard. I am currently calling that type A-5, while the type in the original post (with no slanted belt to the right hip, just the male end of the waistbelt ) is an A-4.

So far the type A-5 seems rare in the first half of the century, or maybe focused on north-east Italy. Other examples are the brass of John Cherowin (d. 1441), possibly the Getty Fior di Battaglia, and the Montefeltro Altarpiece (in that one, we can see both the end of the waistbelt and the sling which runs across the body to the right hip, and the suspension is more "horizontal" than "angled" or "upright").

Getty


Montefeltro


(Technically, that last one should probably be a type H-5, the blade is more horizontal than angled at 45* to the ground ... I am still deciding whether to have three categories or two).

[Sean M]

For comparison, here is the type A-4 suspension by an excellent modern worker:



The white lines show the straps, the buckle (center front), and where the hidden strap at the throat of the scabbard meets the male end of the waistbelt (the end with the strapend, not the end with the buckle). The slings meet the waistbelt at bellybutton and small of the back, not right hip and left buttock like the type A-5 suspension in your manuscript of Froissart and the Montefeltro Altarpiece.

[Sean M]

And again, here is the type A-5 from the Froissart manuscript folio 292r. See how the sling on the front edge of the scabbard runs up towards the right hip, rather than towards the buckle of the waistbelt between the legs?



It shares the waist belt and the V-shaped slings on the back edge with the modern furbishers' A-4, but it has important differences. I don't think they are copying this manuscript and getting it wrong, I think they are copying another source that I have not found yet.

[Sean M]

And here is Albrecht Dürer's Knight, the Death, and the Devil (1513, but the knight was based on a study of a rider painted in 1498).



As you can see, it is neither an A-4 nor an A-5: there is one sling at the back edge not two (and the modern furbishers' A-4 almost always has two converging slings at the back edge). We would need a frontal view to classify it further.

[Rene K.]

I loaded up some Scabbard pictures on pinterest i made while handling some genuine examples in Nuremberg, that show theyre strap constructions.
The Belt on Durers Knight is simply a sewn together draw loop in my opinion.