Help on mark on Italian sword ca. 1580

[Jim McDougall]

Originally Posted by Jens Nordlunde

Jim, you are welcome and yes it is quite interesting.
Belluno is in the south of Tirol, in the Dolomits in northern Italy, and at the time it was under Veneziano control. Te town was famous for sword smiths like Andrea Ferrara, Pietro Formicano and others. To this comes that in the Dolomits there are a number of iron mines from where they got the raw material.

You bet Jens. As I mentioned we know that German blades were often imported into India (through Mahratha ports I believe) but were trade contacts from Italy active in any direct contact as well? The number of Italian blades seem almost incidental in comparison to German, yet we know the sickle marks (regarded as Genoan) were widely copied on Indian blades.