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Fig. 1496. Cup-hilted rapier

Of Spanish workmanship, inscribed: HAONRA DEDIOS ME FECIT ESTRAD EN MRD AN 1701. Wallace Collection (Laking Catalogue, No. 568)

containing combating figures of Romans and Orientals; outside these panels are trophies of various arms. All these subjects are not embossed but chiselled out of the solid metal, any exposed portion of the groundwork being worked to a granulated surface. The other example of this same type of cup hilt is to be seen in the Wallace Collection, No. 584 (Fig. 1494). Here one notes a weapon precisely similar to the Windsor rapier; but the pommel is a little more robust in proportions, and the grip in this case is also composed of steel, chiselled with trophies, etc., to accord with the remainder of the hilt. The blade is of Toledo make. The author is of opinion that the Wallace rapier, and the two weapons belonging to His Majesty the King, are, though Spanish, the work of Italian workmen. A solid cup, of a rare type, but embossed and not chased out of the solid, we figure from the collection of Mr. G. H. Ramsbottom (Fig. 1495). Although belonging to a century which is outside the scope of this work, we will terminate our chronological list of the cup-hilted rapiers by alluding to that example in the Wallace Collection already referred to (ante, p. 68), which bears on the exterior of its cup the amazingly late date of 1701 (Fig. 1496). This, together with an inscription upon it stating that it was made in Madrid, furnish proof of the popularity of the cup-hilted rapier in Spain, and of how stubbornly the introduction of the then almost universally worn