UBB.threads Forums Edged Weapons European Edged Weapons Unknown dagger

Hi gents,
Does anyone know what this is? This dagger is 16 inches long and made of steel with square silver inlays on the scabbard. Any help is appreciated.

I am going to go out on a limb here and suggest this is a left handed sword. The original short swords were left handed swords. The soldier would have his regular sword in his right (dominant) hand and the shorter sword in his left hand. They became known as left handed swords. The wire wrap should be over wood. Not necessarily 100%.. Inlaid items on grip and sheath are also common to the period.

Past that it would be a gentleman's dirk prior to standardization.

Im not a sword guy but in my opinion left handed sword should have another crossguard.Left handed sword was also used as broken sword dagger or other proper name.The idea was to brake the sword of enemy.In this case of course it looks like a dagger more but I would be very suspicious called it left handed sword.Im museum Wawel castle we have a lot of medieval swords so I will try to post some pics soon .Just my 2 cents Im not an expert ;-) TB

pics of left handed dagger in Wawel castle in Cracow

Point well taken Ted, here is mine.

The grip does resemble a gentleman's walk about sword from the 1800's I have.

What do you think?

As i said Im not specialist but from the first look compare to the firemans dagger especially german I would say it should compare to fireman, city quard for parade , municipal police ?. I think it have more conection with ceremonial dagger than used for fight etc.TB

Thank you gentlemen, I'm still researching this dagger and I believe it's 18th century Italian or German, which would make it the “great grandfather of all of German daggers”
I agree with Ted that left handed swords usually have different crossguard that could catch the opponent’s sword and do better hand/wrist protection during the fight. Looks like the crossguard on this dagger is designed to balance off the weight of the blade, so it’s more like gentlemen’s dagger.
I'm planning to make better pictures of it and send them to couple of antique weapons dealers or appraisals. May be they can shed some light on what exactly this is.

This holes on the blade suits for me for medieval ages.Ive seen pattern like this on the daggers in museum .TB

Wow, that would make it over 400 years old. Now I'm even more determined to find out the provenance of this dagger.

hehe but the lower fitting looks like german hunting hewer ;-) do not be so happy

Ted is correct, there are no 400 year old scabbards.

Perhaps post it in the hunting dagger section

The ones Zet showed are called "Main Gauche" which is French for 'left hand'. The were used primarily to trap or immobilize the opponent's sword or to stab him in the gizzard.

Finally I was able to get more info about this dagger. This dagger is constructed of 1660 blade and 19th century mounts. That explains the variance in quality in the mounts vs. the blade. Several antique arms dealers confirmed that.
The makers mark belongs to French blacksmith family and used in 17th and 18th century. Similar markers mark with the bunch of grapes, the CO letters, teardrop shaped cartouche and beaded border appears on a French dress sword ca. 1700 in the Metropolitan Museum of Art collection, and can be found in the Bashford Dean catalogue (no. 17, plate XII, page 123), see picture below. The catalog can be downloaded here: MET Catalogue

This dagger’s blade is earlier than 1700, i.e. same family, different smith, made around 1650-1660. It’s impossible to tell who exactly produced the hilt and the scabbard, but because mounts are cast rather than chiseled the assumption was made that it was done in 19th century.
Still a beautiful dagger and I really like it. I'm adding better pictures, so you can see all the details and appreciate the amount of work that was put into it.

Here is the picture of 1700 French dress sword from the Metropolitan Museum of Art collection with the similar markers mark.

Great research of an impressive dagger

Thanks Jim! While researching this dagger I found one more great catalog "Bashford Dean's catalogue of European daggers", here is the link: LINK

Alex has given us a downloadable link of a book. It is free.
I have several blades from the 1600 to 1800 and while they do not trade well they are very enjoyable to hold and swing.

These are amazing and a pleasure to behold.