Audit Log

Every. single. cell, has to be ‘hand-filled’ with wet enamel, which has a texture very much like watercolor paint, allowed to set, refilled until the surface tension holds, and then fired in a kiln at a very precise temperature and time, which is different for each color. And then the enamel shrinks back to the edges of the cell so you have to let it cool, refill, and then fire again. I’ve had to refill a single cell as many as four times to get color fill.

Blues and greens are the easiest, so you do them first. You take the kiln to a slightly higher temperature, have a few more seconds of leeway before they go horribly discolored on you. Oh, and this is using a modern kiln with a precise, digital temperature controller, not whatever this dude had back in the 1920s which would have involved a lot of guesswork and standing by the kiln counting under his breath because enamel fires in SECONDS.

Guess which colors are the hardest? That’s right, REDS. The colors this stunning bracelet is full of. I LOATHE working with reds. Ten seconds too long, five degrees too hot, and they’re ugly, black-flecked disasters that have to be dissolved out with acid, not incidentally trashing the other colours you’d spent forever on too. Yay.

And when you’ve finally finished, having spend probably hundreds of hours getting all those tiny cells fired and filled? Time to sit down with a bowl of water and a hard grinding stone and grind every single one of them flat, my friend, because the enamel when properly filled actually domes up slightly. Yes, this part is still best done by hand, even today.

Don’t forget to repolish your gold, making sure to get out all the scratches left by your glass-polishing stone, and set all those diamonds and the cameo!

What’s that, you say? One of your glass cells fractured because you used a tiny bit too much pressure setting a diamond?

Dear me. Time to UN-set all those stones and go back to the kiln again. Have a lovely time!

Leaf-bladed swords are a very popular fantasy style and were real, though unlike modern hand-and-a-half longsword versions, the real things were mostly if not always shortswords.

Here are Celtic bronze swords…

…Ancient Greek Xiphoi…

… and a Roman “Mainz-pattern” gladius…

Saw or downright jagged edges, either full-length or as small sections (often where they serve no discernible purpose) are a frequent part of fantasy blades, especially at the more, er, imaginatively unrestrained end of the market.

Real swords also had saw edges, such as these two 19th century shortswords, but not to make them cool or interesting. They’re weapons if necessary…

…but since they were carried by Pioneer Corps who needed them for cutting branches and other construction-type tasks, their principal use was as brush cutters and saws.

This dussack (cutlass) in the Wallace Collection is also a fighting weapon, like the one beside it…

…but may also have had the secondary function of being a saw.

A couple of internet captions say it’s for “cutting ropes” which makes sense - heavy ropes and hawsers on board a ship were so soaked with tar that they were often more like lengths of wood, and a Hollywood-style slice from the Hero’s rapier (!!) wouldn’t be anything like enough to sever them. However swords like this are extremely rare, which suggests they didn’t work as well as intended for any purpose.

I photographed these in Basel, Switzerland, about 20 years ago. Look at the one on the bottom (I prefer the basket-hilt schiavona in the middle).

A lot of “flamberge” (wavy-edge) swords actually started out with conventional blades which then had the edges ground to shape - the dussack, that Basel broadsword and this Zweihander were all made that way.

The giveaway is the centreline: if it’s straight, the entire blade probably started out straight.

Increased use of water power for bellows, hammers and of course grinders made shaping blades easier than when it had to be done by hand. This flamberge Zweihander, however, was forged that way.

Again, the clue is the centre-line.

Incidentally those Parierhaken (parrying hooks - a secondary crossguard) are among the only real-life examples of another common fantasy feature - hooks and spikes sticking out from the blade.

Here are some rapiers and a couple of daggers showing the same difference between forged to shape and ground to shape. The top and bottom rapiers in the first picture started as straights, and only the middle rapier came from the forge with a flamberge blade.

There’s no doubt about this one either.

The reason - though that was a part of it - wasn’t just to look cool and show off what the owner could afford (any and all extra or unusual work added to the price) but may actually have had a function: a parry would have been juddery and unsettling for someone not used to it, and any advantage is worth having.

However, like the saw-edged dussack, flamberge blades are unusual - which suggests the advantage wasn’t that much of an advantage after all.

Here’s a Circassian kindjal, forged wiggly…

…and an Italian parrying dagger forged straight then ground wiggly…

There were also parrying daggers with another fantasy-blade feature, deep notches and serrations which in fantasy versions often resemble fangs or thorns.

These more practical historical versions are usually called “sword-breakers” but I prefer “sword-catcher”, since a steel blade isn’t that easy to break. Taking the opponent’s blade out of play for just long enough to nail him works fine.

NB - the curvature on the top one in this next image is AFAIK because of the book-page it was copied from, not the blade itself.

The missing tooth on that second dagger, and the crack halfway down this next one’s blade, shows what happens when design features cause weak spots.

So there you go: a quick overview of fantasy sword features in real life.

Here’s a real-life weapon that looks like it belongs in a fantasy story or film - and this doesn’t even have an odd-shaped blade…

Just a very flexible one…

If you want more odd blades, Moghul India is a good place to start…