Italian fauchard
length: 8' 5"
This late Victorian-early 1900's Italian fauchard (style from 1500) came to TherionArms via a
major Hollywood prop department and was reconditioned in the TherionArms
workshop from the horrible painted mess it was into the condition you see here.
(The shaft was painted flat black and the head was painted gold on one side
and silver on the other - which tells us something cool about multipurpose
film functionality, but believe me, it was really really ugly). The unsharpened
steel head
has beautiful scroll work and engravings on both sides. The mounting is a bit loose.
I had initially identified this as a Chinese weapon, until an astutue
student of Chinese martial arts living in France wrote me and said that he
didn't recognize the style. I did a bit more research, and realized that it
was a fauchard, and that I already had a picture of one up on my site here. The fauchard is a type of glaive, and
it's the two scrolly hooks on the back that differentiates fauchards from
glaives. It's also a distict possibility that the term "fauchard" was a
Victorian weapons enthusiasts' invention, and that during the time of their
use all of these weapons would have been called glaives. But they most
certainly wouldn't have been called Chinese - except by people who had been
hit in the head for 20 years as a hobby :)
Our lovely model stands about 6'1" at the top of his helmet, giving you an
idea of the impressive size of this polearm.
head: 26"
blade: 21"
horns: 11" (tip to tip)
9/04/01
