A Fine Scottish Basket Hilted Sword circa 1720 mounted with a Solingen made ANDRIA FARARA marked triple fullered blade.

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Price: £6,350

Ref: 42120405

Item Description

A fine and robust Scottish basket hilted sword dating to the decades preceding the  Jacobite Rebellion of 1745. The sword is a fine example of the Scottish armourers’ craft and is in fine uncleaned russet condition. The hilt is of particularly fine quality formed with well wrought rounded structural bars and flattened panels of robust manufacture. The aesthetic appeal of the hilt is most apparent when the hilt is viewed from the front revealing the symmetry and artistic merit of the construction.  The blade is a thickly forged fine quality example of Solingen manufacture

The fully developed basket guard is finely forged into an elegantly contoured profile. The two main frontal guard panels are decorated in traditional style, with vertical and horizontal parallel border lines incised into the exterior surfaces towards the panel edges to form squares. Inside these squares a circle is pierced into the centre, surrounded by four radiating lines, which create a saltire. The panels are further decorated with four triangles which surround the saltires supported by two pierced circles at the base of each. Further circles are pierced into each corner of the squares. The smaller, secondary guard plates to the sides, and the similar sized central front guard plate, are finished in similar style with parallel decorative lines and similar pierced shapes. The edges of the panels are filed with triangles, squares and merlons.

The dome-shaped pommel has an urn shaped  button on top and is decorated with three sets of incised lines, equally spaced, the centre line wider than those on its flanks, which radiate from the button. The upper guard arm terminals of the basket fit into a chiselled groove which extends for the full circumference of the pommel just below its middle to secure the structure. The blade shoulders are secured in a chiselled groove in the cross guard bar underneath the hilt which retains its scrolled wrist guard.

The spirally grooved wooden baluster shaped grip retains its original shagreen cover together with its brass wire binding and woven brass wire “Turks Heads” top and bottom.  The hilt retains its full leather liner covered with red cloth on the outside and stitched with a blue silken hem.

The double edged tapering German-made blade is of fine quality lenticular section. It has a  ricasso which extends 2.5 inches (6.5 cm) from the hilt which has a bold fuller inside each blunt edge which extend for the same length. From the end of the ricasso three narrower fullers extend for 7.5 inches (19 cm). The middle fuller on each side contains the armourers’ mark ANDRIA FARARA with crescent marks in the neighbouring fullers and cross marks in all three. The marks are now vague and almost hidden in the patina.  An incised running wolf mark is present just beyond the termination of the fullers on each side. The blade is 33.75 inches (just under 86 cm) long.

For similar styles of hilt see “Poetry in Steel The Earliest Swords of Walter Allan of Stirling”, by the Baron of Earlshall, London Park Lane Arms Fair, page 129 to 138, Spring 2018, Apollo Publishing. There are strong resemblances between this hilt and those produced in Stirling by both John and Walter Allan during this period.

See also Cyril Mazansky, “British Basket-Hilted Swords”, The Boydell Press, 2005, page 102, fig F15c, for a sword of very similar profile in Blair Castle.

The overall length of the sword is 39.5 inches (100.5 cm) long. The sword is in fine structural shape without repairs or damage and in uncleaned russet condition overall.