1550-1610 AD. A rapier with a pointed diamond-section double-edged blade, ricasso extending to about 6cm with a stylised maker's mark with evidence of inlay, same maker's mark to the horizontal ring; bent quillons with inlay, an additional reinforcement knuckle bow to the lower part of the hilt, cylindrical pommel. See The Armouries of the Tower of London, Inventory of the armouries, the offensive weapons, London, 1916; Oakeshott, E., The sword in the Age of the Chivalry, Woodbridge, 1964 (1994); Dufty, A.R., European swords and daggers in the Tower of London, London, 1974; this specimen found various parallels with rapiers preserved in the museums around the world, like the ones published by Dufty (1974, plate 21) and preserved in the Tower of London, and (in the shape) with a decorated rapier of Metropolitan Museum (accession number 14.25.1117"). 1.3 kg, 1.01m (39 3/4"). From a private family collection; previously acquired from a collection formed before 1990; thence by descent; accompanied by an academic report by military specialist Dr Raffaele D'Amato The rapier, derived from Oakeshott Type XVIIIe swords, where the ricasso is usually narrower than the blade itself, was the principal civilian sidearm throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, without excluding its military use. Designed for cut-and-thrust fencing of progressively complex techniques, the rapier was usually characterised by a double-edged blade with an acute point and a complex guard for the hand. The guards, usually of iron or steel, were subject to a variety of embellishment. They were engraved, chiselled, gilded, damascened, and encrusted in gold and silver in keeping with fashionable styles. Rapier blades, invariably of steel, bear a variety of maker’s marks denoting their origin in the two principal centres of blade-making, Toledo in Spain and Solingen in Germany. It is generally accepted among historians that the rapier eclipsed the more ungainly methods of fighting – the evidence certainly suggests that for young men the elongated rapier was the weapon of choice.