December 10-13, 2024 Firearms & Militaria
This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 12/10/2024
This handsome officer’s sword, 37 inches L overall, evidences the distinctive “Rhode Island” style of hilting. It features a solid silver lion’s head; braided wire and silver flat strip-wrapped grips; and a Sheffield-plate, “boat” or S-crossguard of sheet silver with border decoration. The slightly-curved blade, which is 31.5 inches long by1.25 inches in width at the ricasso, bears an incised medallion of an early Federal eagle and stars. Andrew Mowbray and other researchers have attributed swords of this form (featuring both lion and eagle pommels) as the product of the workshop of Seril Dodge (1765-1802), a Connecticut-born silversmith and sword cutler who established himself in Providence, Rhode Island by the early 1780s [ref: Mowbray “The American Eagle-Pommel Sword” (1988), p. 48].