Smallsword with scabbard (Detail)

Smallsword and scabbard, probably for a page. The hilt of the sword is composed of a flattened, spherical pommel with button; steel grip of oval section swelling at the centre; slender knuckle-guard, also swelling in the centre, and returning to the pommel which is holed to receive it; single, short quillon with lobated end; diminutive hilt-arms, small shell-guard formed of two oval panels; the whole, including the grip, decorated with figures emblematical of the Arts and Sciences, with shells and rococo foliage, finely chiselled in low relief in bright steel on a ground matt of gold. Blade of flattened hexagonal section merging into a flat oval section at the forte, and etched throughout its length with interlaced scrollwork on a gilt ground.

Scabbard covered with blackened fish-skin, and mounted with a locket (furnished with a slender tongue, or belt-hook, to slip into the hanger), and ferrule, both decorated en suite with the hilt.

Hilt French (Paris), about 1730; blade probably German (Solingen).

Hayward, Apollo, XLVIII, pp. 33-5, fig. VI; Norman, 1967, illus. 18; Norman and Barne, 1980, p. 384. A sword of similar style is in the Reubell Collection in the Metropolitan Museum, New York (Dean, cat. of Court Swords, no. 40, pl. XXXI).