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Cutlers
and Guilds
in Medieval Swordmaking
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In
broad terms the situation was like this:
Culters sold swords. They were the entrepreneurs of the business.
They catered toindividuals and for representatives of groups. Orders
were filled after specification and the cutler could sub contract
different craftsmen to do various parts of the manufacture.
The swordsmith supplied the blade blank. He also would have worked
with the grinders. If his situation was organized locally or supervised
by the cutler would have varied.
There would also have been craftsmen directly employed by persons
of power. Wealthy and influential people would have made very particular
"custom orders" both for private use and for selected troops.
Craftsmen were organized in guilds, but I do not know to what extent
or if at all the guilds had any role apart from organizing the craftsmen
and seeing to their rights and duties. I do not think the guilds were
doing wholesale of products. It was rather a situation where craftsmen
worked more or less individually (rarely) or in groups for longer
or shorter periods to fullfill various orders and "projects".
The common situation today when someone commissions a custom sword
is not much like it would have been historically. With out knowing
for certain, I´d like to envision the situation like this:
A cutler has a reputation for offering fine swords. He has contact
with a number of sub-producers responsible for blades, buckles, gold
and silver work (and sometimes even cooperated with artists to develop
novel designs and decorative styles). A customer might consider a
new sword and visits with /contacts the cutler. He will show the customer
different options for blades and mountings. They´ll discuss any decoration
and special features for the sword. The same would go for an order
for many swords: stype of blade, style of hilt, materials used, price
and delivery date.
After this the cutler would organize the manufacture of the sword(s)
and do quality controll of the finished product.
Swords were also made from scratch to be sold on export. In those
cases the customer contact would have been less involved. Perhaps
the craftsmen knew what styles went well for different markets and
supplied what they thoguht would sell best.
Quality control and regualtion of work practises and prices were an
important part of medieval guilds. Craftsmen had to comply to these
or be fined or forced out of business. This was a tool to limit the
impact of competition as well as offering a protection against favouratism.
Again, the situation would have varied very much, but generally there
were more than one craftsman involved in the making of a sword, but
one person fronted the business. This is true from high middle ages
an onwards.
In the fringe areas of Europe the market relied more on import of
finished swords and unmounted blades. In towns there were still cutlers
working refurbishing old swords, rehilting blades and making new swords
from locally made blades or imported stuff.
To what extent customers had an impact on design and execution, we
can only guess. There are no records of this from this early time.
Not that I know of anyway. I suspect that customers usually had rather
general ideas and let the craftsmen work after a chosen theme or motif
or style, sometimes presenting sketches in advance to base final decision
on. Concept drawings are nothing new ;-) |
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