As this awesome comic shows, many students find the new, foreign, terminology a major barrier to learning swordsmanship. (You can see the whole strip here; this is just one panel) I get it. I … [Read more...]
Guns, books, and trapeze (no germs, but much steel). Travels in the Americas
It has been a splendid few days in Seattle so far, kicked off by a trapeze lesson with the excellent Milla Marshall at SANCA. The place was pretty empty, so there was no-one to hold the camera (Milla … [Read more...]
Philippo Vadi, reborn!
What's this? A new book? Or an old one? My recent fascination with producing affordable facsimiles of fencing manuscripts began with wanting to curl up in a chair with Vadi. Mission … [Read more...]
Exciting times, for booky sword geeks anyway.
About a month ago I was checking through a pdf of Vadi's De Arte Gladiatoria Dimicandi, and thinking how lovely it would be to just pluck the manuscript off a shelf and curl up in an armchair with it. … [Read more...]
Size Matters: how long should your rapier be?
As you may know, I am in the process of videoing everything we do in the salle, and putting it up online for free. This project is called the "Syllabus Wiki". One of the many benefits of this is that … [Read more...]
6 lessons from my favourite mistake
Way back in the dawn of time when I came to Finland to open my school, my research into historical swordsmanship was at a very early stage. But we all have to start somewhere. As I wasn’t sure whether … [Read more...]