I've bitten off quite a lot reproducing this, especially as this is not my given period.
Hi it's Tod from Tod's Workshop and Tod Cutler here and today I'm with Stuart. I'm the curator of
the Cromwell Museum in Huntington. And I have got one of Oliver Cromwell's original swords in front
of me which I'm here to document because I'm going to be making a copy of it and bringing it back in
with Stuart's blessing, to compare the two absolutely and it's going to be a difficult job,
so tell me about the sword. Yeah I hate to say Tod, you've not picked the easiest one
to choose here, as you can see it's hugely elaborate. Yeah so this beautiful item
is one of three swords we've got in the collection which are on long term loan to the Cromwell Museum
from Cromwell's descendants, so they've got a pretty unimpeachable provenance to them.
So there's always the chance of fakery and hoodwinkery in the past yeah, but essentially
this is a dead cert, once one of a Cromwells sword. Of the other swords we've got, one of
them it actually appears in one of the paintings, so that's absolutely cast iron. You can't really
argue with that. This one we know certainly was in the family as far back as the 1700s,
it's been passed down ever since with all the details and everything else out of it we're kind
of 99% certain so it's as close as you can get with this sort of thing. May I? Of course you may.
This is the privilege, the real privilege of what I do. You just see the YouTube stuff, I get to
handle it and days like this, yeah thank you. It's light isn't it? It is, I mean it's again,
it's one of the mythologies which you must deal with all the time about you know uh particularly
things like Hollywood movies tend to depict swords as great sort of chunks of iron which are really
unwieldy, this is beautifully balanced and I have to say I've always sort of said this is
actually my favourite sword in the collection. I've always had a running joke with myself that
if the zombie apocalypse ever happens this is my weapon of choice. It's know, you know, though I'd
want something a bit more cleavery for me. To get through those zombie skulls. Yeah yeah yeah yeah
zombie apocalypse? Falchion. Yeah but I get where you're coming from, it is beautiful, it's lovely
and it's really well balanced, goodness what a thing, and it is in exceptionally good condition
and there is, it's always interesting with anything which has got a complex hilt is
you pick up a reproduction and or or sort of a reenactment reproduction which because as
a re-enactor actually, you're familiar with as well, yeah and the hilts are usually massive and
really gappy and you pick up a real one: they're really very close to the fist and actually um here
the the guard is actually touching my fist. There has been some
deformation where it's been dropped or stamped on or something possibly, but not a lot no and it is
already touched my fist so you can see here where there's a bit of deformation, i'm guessing that
it was probably no more than six or seven millimeters, a quarter of an inch
between my fist and that guard when it was originally done but look at this.........
What an extraordinary piece. So I've bitten off quite a lot
reproducing this especially as this is not my given period, but what a thing. So the blade
we think is German um you correctly identified that with some of the markings on the blade here.
It's also been inscribed with these initials you can see in the very short fuller there is
on the blade here as well but interestingly we've got, so we've got the running wolf for Passau on
both sides and the initials on both sides and the makers stamp on both sides. Makers mark which is,
I can't recall seeing that actually it's quite unusual.
I'm not aware of many other existing examples of it, but um yes it's obviously somebody was
making quite a statement with this particular sword. We'll weigh this in due course, but I mean
it's under two pounds, it's I don't know a kilo ish maybe a little bit more a little bit
more. So I think I can remember from memory, it's been a while since I've measured it,
but it's about a kilo in weight. It balances right about on the initial 'O',
it balances on 'Oliver' absolutely. But what a thing, basket hilt here this is of course typical
of the the type of sword that we refer to as a mortuary sword and it's got kind of some of the
classic decorations you can see on the mortuary sword which are these sort of little heads
of people on here, now the reason why we call it a mortuary sword is a
yet again a Victorianism. It's interesting though that it is very delicately made in the sense of
I'm looking at these guards here 1.5 /1.8 millimeters thick, five millimeters wide
yeah? Any kind of a sword strike on that is going to collapse it onto your hand so that
whole concept of a sword being indestructible is yet again shown to be just junk. I mean I think
this one here is very much an officer's sword and it's a it's one that's deserves with as much
a status symbol as anything else out of it as well as being obviously a functioning weapon,
what is quite interesting though and is quite unusual compared to mortuary swords of this period
is this thumb ring on this side which we don't tend to see quite so many examples of and actually
I find personally does it sort of you know when I've held it, it actually feels it almost balances
the sword a little bit better once you've kind of got your thumb inside it. Well yes I mean it makes
the whole thing more nimble you know you I'm not a fencer in that sense, but I certainly used to
and I understand the additional control that gives you. That has not been cast that has been
formed and chiseled presumably. Yes that's your area of expertise far more than mine.
That is one evil job i can tell you.
He said peering over his glasses, barely see the detail.
So what a fascinating thing. What I would say
is as a piece of quality work, it is not phenomenal, no there is there is better quality
pieces out there. But I think that you know, that possibly uh meets the needs of the period
we're talking about where you're manufacturing stuff in a sort of a period of a civil war
um where perhaps there isn't necessarily this of the time and uh craftsmanship available to be able
to work on these sorts of things um to the level of detail you might do in peacetime. For example
I've noticed it before very often in museum swords that you look at it
and you look at it from a meter away and you're blown away by how extraordinary the piece is
yeah and then you pick it up and you squint at it like I'm doing peering over my specs and you
go oh actually, and there's one I'm thinking of particularly in the Wallace Collection that I love
and do you look at it it's just stunning, stunning, stunning piece and then you pick
it up and you study it and you think actually that work is rough as heck, it really is, but the thing
is it looks good, great. There you know he's on a horse, he's moving around, he's commanding his
troops, he's waving a sword in the air yeah? and it looks fantastic. To some extent, I mean a lot
of this stuff is for show from a distance because obviously you know nobody's going to come that
close to him as it were to be able to examine these sorts of things. I always bang on about
that with with weapons you have the show side and you have the not show side and the not show side
can be rough as heck sometimes, because it's just not important. This is going to take some doing.
How am I going to reproduce this? Because it really is a piece of work.
I'm going to measure it now, just taking all the principal measurements,
tracing it and that's going to give me all the information for the blade work. That's fine,
that's relatively straightforward, it's actually thankfully a relatively straightforward blade,
the hilt work; that's a killer. I have a sculptor friend who
can do this, but actually he works on films quite a lot and he is away and out the country,
so the proposition that I am going for now is that I'm going to photograph all of this put it,
through a process called photogrammetry which will make a 3d visual model of this hilt
and then what I'll do is 3d print that and then I'm going to send that to my friend Matt and Matt
is going to sculpt the detail onto that form, so in that way we get the form absolutely perfect
and we get the humanity of the sculpting that Matt's going to give it, because he is a genius
when it comes to this. Nice compromise between sort of old and new in a way really isn't it then
and getting the best of both worlds into producing a replica. I think very much so, because the steel
chiseler who did this that's his job, that's all he's done for the last 20,30,40 years, that's not
all that I've done and I'm just not going to be good enough. So first thing is we will trace this
i'll put a few notations on it and we'll take it from there. Cool okay we're gonna trace the
blade on here and then I'll turn it around and we'll carry on with all the major measurements.
He's a pointy little fella. This must be oh yeah now really what I'm going to do is make reference
measurements so that when I have my model I can refer to this, so I'm just going to mark off.
These are all the little details you need to look for so it's sort of rounded
on the underneath and then flat on that so it has a an equator to it.
It's a hexagonal grip, but it transitions from round at the pommel going into a fairly
pronounced hexagon and then coming down into an oval, so it's a blend the whole way through
and then covered in the most evil wire work I've ever seen.
When you measure it down to that level the amount of fluctuation really does show as you say it's a
sort of handmade item isn't it, so you know that you've got that level of difference inside it that
you wouldn't get from a precision machine made item necessarily today. It's a full data set for
the blade here all the cross sections and then really just notations about the hilt because
obviously there's an awful lot of complexity in the hilt and in the wire work and so on. Well the
first part has been done, so I've noted all the dimensions all my little sketches and my little
thoughts and insights into it on a piece of paper; right very old school and now I'm going modern and
it's a process called photogrammetry. So what happens is I just take hundreds of photos very
steadily just moving around an arc changing the sword position taking more photos and then it goes
into a piece of software, stitches them all together and creates basically a 3d view of this
hilt work here. So here we are. Excellent I think it sounds simple. Somebody else's problem right!
It's interesting actually as we were saying so even you know somebody's very used to this
object it's sort of it's interesting looking at it for this level of time and particularly in
this lighting as well you kind of notice you know even more detail on it than I'm usually used to.
Yes you spend your day doing your job, not looking at pieces all the time. No and absolutely in a
small museum like this where you know you're kind of my job involves being everything from
sort of fundraiser, to doing the cleaning, to volunteer manager, to dealing with retail
bits and pieces and all sorts of stuff yes you know it's actually nice to be able to spend this
level of time actually with a, with a single object. I've taken every photo I need to take
and probably doubled that, it'll be really interesting actually to see the
uh the melding of very modern technology with very old-school technology like I run. But really thank
you so much because I know it's a charitable organisation. You know this is kind of a big
deal for you as well yeah it's the best collection in the world of artefacts relating to Cromwell,
the largest on public display and uh yeah our job is to tell the story of this hugely significant
fascinating remarkable, but also very controversial figure and bring him to life for
people. So well and I think you do very well thank you. Absolute privilege handling this sword, so
thank you for letting me, thank you for letting me measure it, photograph it and ultimately reproduce
it, No, no we're very much looking forward to seeing the finished article about a year? Maybe,
maybe, maybe well you know do bring it back and we'll compare it to the original and see we'll
see what sort of the differences between the two of them are and how close it gets. No I'd
love to do that it's always an absolute pleasure to lay things side by side and have a look; so
Stuart, Cromwell Museum, thank you very much. You're very welcome Tod. Thank you very much.