A prestigious volume looking at the swords, helmets, pistols, daggers
and more from this remarkable collection, spanning over a thousand years of
history
The collection of arms and armour at the Wallace Collection is widely
recognised as being one of the largest and most important in the
UK. Consisting of around 2,500
objects, it represents both European and Oriental arms and armour. The European
part of the collection was acquired primarily by Sir Richard Wallace, mainly in
1871, from the collections of Sir Samuel Rush Meyrick, founding father of the
serious study of arms and armour in Britain, and that of the Comte de
Nieuwerkerke, Director of the Louvre
under the Emperor Napoleon III.
It is thereby an important surviving example of the 19th Century
passion for collecting arms and armour, whose rarity, beauty of design,
superlative craftsmanship and richness of decoration were the guiding principles
behind its formation. The collection is wide-ranging, with the earliest pieces
of armour dating from the 14th century, the earliest sword from the 10th
Century, while the very fine historic firearms collection spans the 16h to the
19th Centuries.
In Masterpieces of European Arms and Armour in the Wallace
Collection, curator Tobias Capwell along with David Edge, Head of Conservation,
introduce this significant collection in an historical context, highlighting 70
of the collection’s most interesting objects, spanning from before 1400 to after
1800. Among these are the earliest piece in the collection, a Scandinavian sword
dating from the early medieval ‘Viking age’; a golden tournament helmet of
Emperor Ferdinand I from 1555; a dagger from c. 1600 belonging to French King
Henri IV; and a flint lock pistol dating from c.1740 of Prince Louis, Dauphin of
France, the eldest son of King Louis XV.
