Antique Chinese Jian - Marsh Private Collection

B

Bill Marsh

Joined
Mar 26, 2002
Messages
1,861
I am new to the HI forum, but have bought several HI Khuks, these are the only modern weapons in my collection. The HI Khukuris have a presence and attention to detail that I find lacking in most modern weapons and dearly love cutting things down in my back yard. I can not do this with my antiques.

I collect Old Chinese swords, hammers, maces and armor. Mostly from the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911)and Ming Dynasty (1368-1644). It is difficult to judge age when you get beyond a certain point because many weapons were made unchanged in design for hundreds of years. I look more to the quality of the weapon and the historical accuracy of the fittings.

Here is a Chinese Jian (double edged sword) The blade 24.25 inches long, 1 1/8 wide and 1/4 thick, very old, possibly Ming Dynasty. The overall length in scabbard is 30.5 inches and total weight is 32 oz.

The fittings are called "Long Quan" or "Dragon Spring." They were made during the Qing dynasty. It is common that blades far outlast the fittings. The scabbard and grip are recent and made of old Chinese mahagony and are authentic as to the design. The carved grip is unusual, but still fits with historical accuracy.

A Jian was more of a scholar or gentleman weapon military. The light short blade was used to nick tendons and arteries in the opponent. The object was to incapacitate the opponent and the greatest victory was to cut off the opponent's right thumb so that he could not hold his weapon. As you can imagine, that took incredible skill.

If you would like to email me with questions about details, I will be happy to respond. I hope that you enjoy these pictures.


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I welcome your comments,

Best regards
Bill Marsh
 
Bill:

It's beautiful. I love the elegance of design that the Chinese applied to so many of their handiworks. Are the "seven stars" in brass? It was hard to tell from the pic. Pattern welded blade?

The difficulty in judging the age of a piece of Chinese work isn't limited to weapons and armor. You run into the same issues with Ming and early Qing dynasty furniture, too. I guess if it ain't broke...

S.
 
I don't know antiques,
but I know what I like.

That's a handsome blade.

I practice taiji jian and I've always wondered
what a - real - jian would feel like while doing the form.

I'm getting a British Army Service Khuk this week
and look forward to comparing it to my Khuk shaped machete.

I expect in both cases the Real item will shine.

Thanks for sharing.


As to your formatting question, resize that wide image
by 50% or more (640 pixels wide max to fit easily onto
800x600 screens).
If you need an excellent program for image handling,
try ThumbsPlus at www.cerious.com Let's have mor...an ask for a software upgrade. :D regards
 
Spence

You have a good eye for blades. "Pattern welding" it is. I had it polished by Phil Tom a friend and mentor. It looked good before, but he did a great job bring out the pattern.

He said: "It turns out that the blade has a more impressive damascus patterning that I had expected! Those layers show up quite dramatically; I used an approach that maximized the color contrast between the lamellae, without going into any "textured" or topograpic etch like you see on some of the twistcore Chinese, or most of the Indonesian keris blades. It was well worth the extra work."

Sure was worth it to me!
 
DDean,

I have it at that size now, just to not take up extra energy from this server. There is something in the posting where you do the /? where the size is limited to the wide of a 640 screen, but I can't find it.

Thanks
Bill
 
Originally posted by Bill Marsh
DDean,

I have it at that size now, just to not take up extra energy from this server. There is something in the posting where you do the /? where the size is limited to the wide of a 640 screen, but I can't find it.

Thanks
Bill [/B][/QUOTE]

Let's see if this works. I resized it on my photoshop program cuttin it down a tad over 50%.

Looks like it worked okay, took away all of the nice detail though. That's one beautiful sword and one I would be very proud to have.:)
Click to expand...
 
Thanks for sharing. I too have spent a few years with the Chinese sword. I only have the replicas to train. I always wanted a real sword. It wasn't until I was traveling in Peru I came across a private collector and saw my first authentic Chinese sword. He was mostly involved with Japanese armament. I spent a whole day looking and never saw it all. I don't remember when they turned the "hilt" around to trap the opponents blade. It is the way most replicas have it today. I enjoy the history and craftmanship of the Asian blades. All the best
 
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