This past weekend Arms and Armor V.P. Dr. Nathan Clough travelled to the East Coast with some colleagues from the Oakeshott Institute to handle and measure three 16th century training longswords in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Higgins Armory Collection at the Worcester Art Museum in Western
The goal was to determine how these original fencing swords differ from the types of longsword simulators used in HEMA today, and eventually to think through what these differences might mean for the historical insights to be gained from training and fencing with these swords.
Hilt detail of the one of the Met feders
Arms and Armor Fechterspiel training sword
Nathan Clough, Ph.D. is Vice President of Arms and Armor and a member of the governing board of The Oakeshott Institute. He is a historical martial artist and a former university professor of cultural geography. He has given presentations on historical arms at events including Longpoint and Combatcon, and presented scholarly papers at, among others, The International Congress on Medieval Studies.
Craig Johnson is the Production Manager of Arms and Armor and Secretary of The Oakeshott Institute. He has taught and published on the history of arms, armor and western martial arts for over 30 years. He has lectured at several schools and Universities, WMAW, HEMAC, 4W, and ICMS at Kalamazoo. His experiences include iron smelting, jousting, theatrical combat instruction and choreography, historical research, European martial arts and crafting weapons and armor since 1985.