just choke on it

Custom Glocks

Processional Glaive 

Dated: late 17th-early 18th century

Culture: Italian, Venice

Measurements: Head 90 cm. Overall length 223 cm

With long flat knife-like head double-edged over the upper third of its length, the head formed with a pair of scalloped nodules at the base, pierced with two rosettes within the lower half. The back edge is formed with a matching nodular projection towards the point and a pair of projecting crescentic stylised monsters issuant from a pierced rosette. The polearm has faceted socket on a moulded short neck and extending to form short straps, and the head decorated with pricked and coarsely engraved baroque designs on both sides.

Principally over the lower half, the weapon includes garlands of fruit and trophies of armour all ‘antica enclosing vacant oval cartouches and with differing grotesques at the base, one involving a helmet: on its original wooden haft studded with patterned panels of domed brass nails and retaining the fragmented original fabric covering. A comparable example is in the former armoury of The Council of Ten in the Palazzo Ducale, Venice (inv. A 860). See FRANZOI, Umberto, L’Armeria del Palazzo Ducale a Venezia, Dosson (Treviso) 1990, no. 290, pp. 109 and 188, fig. 94.