This smart matching pair are close replicas of an antique training sword acquired by our client. We enjoyed working closely with the customer, who provided a plethora of close measures and photographs of the original, to create faithful replicas with a few personalisation.
These swords were recreated for thrust-centric early 17th Century Italian fencing, and as such boast longer blades. The original sword's blade was broken, but the client's chosen blade length balanced nicely with the dimensions of the original pommels, allowing us to remain true to the sizing of the antique.
We named these the Ashvin swords, after a pair of divine twins found in Proto-Indo-European mythology. The Divine Twins were most commonly seen as youthful demigods, who served as protectors. This seemed fitting for slender twin swords with strong hand protection!
Key features include the hand-forged ambidextrous shell guard, which tapers to meet the rings. The steel finish of the furniture allows the ornate wire-wrapped guard to truly stand out, with strands of braided copper and steel.
Please see our pricing structure for an idea of what a similar sword would cost.
∴ Specs ∴
Weight: 1190g
Total length: 132cm
Blade length: 117cm
Blade width: 1.6cm
Blade stock: 8mm
Grip length: 8cm
Grip and pommel length: 14.5cm
Quillon span: 21.5cm
Point of Balance: 12.5cm
Ambidextrous
Blunt edge
Fencing flex
Swollen tip
∴ Notes ∴
The hand-forged and heat-treated guards and cylindrical pommels are polished to a satin sheen. Each guard consists of an ambidextrous shell tapering to meet narrow rings.
The octagonal grips are adorned with braided copper and steel wire, with Turks head knots to the top and bottom. The construction is completed with carved, faceted nuts for blade replacement.
∴ Gallery ∴
∴ A Protective Pairing ∴
They were always a strange spectacle, those splendid youths fencing on the riverbank. They were there every week, like clockwork - truly, like clockwork - feinting and lunging in near-silence as fine ladies on their afternoon strolls ogled behind lace fans.
It was not so much the appearance of the young men which drew people's stares, though that was remarkable in itself. The two were unmistakably twins - from their like height and willowy build, to the neat plumes of copper hair tied at the napes of their necks, to the identical smiles on their angular faces when they drew back their odd wire masks.
No, it was not their like appearance, so much the identical way in which they moved. Each was always a step ahead of the other, long blades a maelstrom of silvery movement between the two dancing figures, yet somehow never touching. So rare, in fact, was a clash of steel on steel, that heads would turn across the meadow, keen to see which stately brother had gained the advantage. Otherwise their fight was ever one of slipping and ceding, neither blade ever quite where it was expected to be.
And the blades! Those fine swords, as same and as slender as the twins themselves, bright copper gleaming at their grips beneath certain steely shells.
Nobody knew where they came from, those brothers, or where they went once their fight was done. But if any passerby had once been unnerved by their presence, their ceaseless play, then that feeling had given way through sheer familiarity to a strange sort of reassurance. They were a fixture of our little town, as much as the weeping willows where lovers met, or the austere steeples across the water.