Coffee Table Book of: Swords (Paperback)

Description

Coffee Table Book of: Swords is a large format book of swords, printed edge to edge in colour, one picture to a page and the widest carried across two: blades laid out plain, hilts seen close, scabbards of leather, velvet, lacquer and wood, steel forged, hardened, ground and polished, swords at rest in bare rooms, and the forges, mills and furnaces where steel was made, standing empty at many hours and in many seasons.

Hilts and steel are seen close: the lobed pommel of a Viking sword, the swept hilt and the cup hilt of the rapier, the basket hilt of a broadsword, the forward bent cap of a shamshir, the silk braid and ray skin of a katana grip, the three bars of a sabre hilt and a longsword pommel with the tang hammered over it, then the widened back of a kilij near its point, the pale wavy line of a hardened edge, pattern welded steel twisting in bands and crucible steel that shows like watered silk.

The making and care follow the steel from black iron sand on a dark shore, charcoal smoking in a beech wood and a clay furnace glowing on a winter night, to a rough blade on the forge floor, a blade glowing on the anvil, clay laid thick on the spine, a quench trough steaming, a sandstone wheel turned by a river and a row of whetstones, ray skin and silk braid bound on a grip, a scabbard carved in magnolia wood or stitched in leather, and oil, powder and paper for keeping a blade bright.

Then the swords at rest: two swords on a lacquered stand while rain falls past a paper door, a shamshir on a red rug under an arched window, a cutlass in a ship’s cabin, a Viking sword by a hearth on a winter night, a dao by a round window of plum blossom, a smallsword in its velvet lined case, a two handed sword in the corner of a stone room, and a longsword on a sunlit wall.

Short notes run through the book, on the kinds of sword and how each was carried, how blades, hilts and scabbards are made and cared for, and the long history of the sword: a smith judges the heat of steel by its glowing colour, easiest to read in a dim forge, the shamshir’s deep curve makes it a sword for the slashing cut more than the thrust, a swept hilt, a cage of curving bars, guards the hand against a sliding blade, and the widened back near the point, the yelman, is often sharpened as a second edge.

Printed in full colour on heavy 150gsm coated paper at 216 x 279 mm (8.5 x 11 inches), as a paperback.