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E N G L I S H S UMMA R Y
i
85
Niels Svendsen Birch executed a test sword
less “ courieux” than the old masters were
w illing to let pass. He received his licence
from the magistrate but little more is heard
o f him.
It is known from the death-registers that
the journeyman sword-cutlers had an organi
zation o f their own. Thus, in
1 7 6 1
, the two
“ oldgesellen” o f the sword-cutlers were pre
sent at the death o f the journeyman sword-
cutler, O luf Lungman, who, to judge from
the wardrobe and other belongings in his
possession, was a rather neat, almost elegant,
young man. Similar sources sometimes give
glimpses o f the private life o f the masters.
The poorer ones would often live with wife
and children in one single room, the work
bench standing at one end, the conjugal bed
at the other. The richer had their own houses
w ith a separate workshop.
The right to execute and sell articles from
silver and gold other than sword-hilts was
bestowed upon the sword-cutlers by their
statutes o f
1685
. This put the sword-cutlers
under the same conditions as the silversmiths
who were obliged to sign their products w ith
a master’s mark and have them stamped by
the warden. The master’s mark o f some
sword-cutlers may sometimes be found on
hilts made from less precious metals. On
page
17 2
is reproduced a series o f master’s
marks.
The requirements for the masterpiece: an
iron-hilt inlaid with silver and gold, were not
altered by the new ordinance concerning the
guilds issued in
17 5 6
. A reform o f the Royal
Academy in
1 7 7 1
affected the conditions o f
the artisans, a designing class for those arti
sans who ought to know some drawing being
introduced. At the same time it was laid
down that designs for the masterpieces should
be submitted to the Academy which should
also approve the masterpiece itself. Only one
such case is known relating to a sword-cut-
lcr’s masterpiece in the
18
th century. A ll this
tended to improve the standard o f the arti
sans’ work but the sword-cutlers may have
been too much on the decline at that time to
benefit from academic training. Later on, the
teaching o f G. F. Hetsch made the designing
class the centre from which a pure neo-classi
cal taste spread to all branches o f applied art,
and under his auspices also the last generation
o f Copenhagen sword-cutlers came to matu
rity.
c h a p t e r
7
REVIVAL AND EXTINCTION
In one o f the years between
1 8 1 2
and
1820
the last o f the old Copenhagen sword-cutlers
may be assumed to have closed their work
shops, but a revival o f the old craft was at
hand. In
1828
and
1829
two young sword-
cutlers from Prague, Johan Herazcek and
Matthias Jurzick, took out licences as sword-
cutlers in Copenhagen and the arts and crafts
movement o f the new century was to provide
a fertile ground for their activity.
In the meantime, the braziers and gold
smiths had done some sword-cutler’s work
e.g. the sword o f honour which was presented
in
1828
to prince Charles o f Hesse-Cassel on
his
70
th anniversary as a Danish officer (Plate
17
). Certain professional disputes arose be
tween the braziers and sword-cutlers after the
establishment o f Herazcek and Jurzick, but
they seem to have been easily solved by the
Royal ordinance o f
1828
according to which
the braziers’ and sword-cutlers’ trades were
united on certain conditions for those masters
who wanted to work in both o f them. The
scope o f private sword-cutlers was limited by
the circumstance that the factory at Frederiks
værk furnished the army with side-arms and
also attempted to produce finer swords (cf.
Plate
20
). Herazcek and Jurzick soon estab-