Thomas Del Mar Ltd
Lot 173
A GERMAN CROSS-HILTED HUNTING-SWORD WITH EXTREMELY RARE ETCHED CALENDAR BLADE, THE BLADE CIRCA 1620-30, THE HILT AND THE SCABBARD EACH 16TH CENTURY with long broad flat blade double-edged and coming to a very short point, etched in fine detail over almost the entire length of each face with a Gregorian calendar in linear tabulated form, one side bearing the months "IANIARIVS" to "IVNIVS", the other "IVLIVS" to "DECEMBER", giving the days of the week abbreviated to their first letters, each day of the month numbered and with its saints` day or day of religious observance identified, the named months additionally identified by their respective German seasonal names together with the monthly total number of days, the monthly tables punctuated by cartouches filled with the twelve Zodiacal signs together with a cabalistic Greek miniscule letter, the final cartouche inscribed "Mon Esperence En Dieu" ("My Hope in God"), and decorated with rollwerk panels on both sides at the base, fitted with earlier rounded iron crosspiece with button terminals, stopper-shaped pommel, and wooden grip retaining a pair of "Turks` heads" and a portion of the original binding all of patterned brass wire: in an earlier leather-covered wooden scabbard, decorated with tooled moulded bands about the top, with provision for extra-pieces and fitted with pierced U-shaped iron chape (the blade coarsely filed along the edges and over the surface of the base on one side, the scabbard suspension hook and the extra-pieces each missing) 87 cm; 34¼ in blade This blade would appear to be hitherto unrecorded. A sword mounted with a calendar blade tabulated and inscribed in a near identical manner, almost certainly by the same hand, is in the von Kienbusch Collection, in the Philadelphia Museum of Art: see von Kienbusch 1963, cat. no. 439, pl.CII. The von Kienbusch blade is etched additionally with portrait medallions, including that of Maximilian, Count Palatine of the Rhine, the title with which he was invested in 1623. Another closely comparable blade signed by the Solingen bladesmith Clemens Tache was formerly in the armoury of the Grand-Dukes of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach in the Wartburg: see Diener-Schönberg 1912 (W.-G.-I. Nr. 4456), cat. no. 401, p.110, pl.60. The Gregorian or Christian calendar was introduced by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582. For a general account of extant German and English hunting weapons with calendar blades see Blackmore 1971, pp.17-18. Also see Seiler 1940-42, pp. 11-19, for a detailed survey of the calendar blades of Ambrosius Gemlich of Munich (active circa 1527-42), whose work was most likely the source of inspiration for the present 17th century blade. The scabbard is of the type found on German and Swiss Landesknecht swords in the early 16th century and as such is very rare in its own right. A closely comparable example with sword and extra-pieces, circa 1520, is in the collection of the late Sir James Mann: see Dufty, 1974, pl. 16a.
