Hi! Time flies... Swordschool turned 24 years old yesterday! March 17th 2001 saw the very first class I taught as a full-time professional instructor, at the Olympic Stadium in Helsinki. Not the whole Olympic Stadium. A small room somewhere inside it. I was expecting about 6 to 12 people, and something over 70 showed up. Some of them are still training now. I don’t have a photo of that very day, but digging around through the archives I found some golden oldies. Here’s what a rapier class...
15 days ago • 1 min read
Hi!Lots going on this week: the new Fiore film is raising funds; the Historical Fencing Research company has released its findings on tip safety; the Fiore facsimile books are printing and shipping as we speak; and I even made it briefly to the Wallace Collection (for the millionth time). The NEW Fiore Movie Have you seen the short movie Fiore? It’s a ten minute film with extraordinary historical accuracy and detail, about Fiore dei Liberi. It came out in 2022. I interviewed the film maker...
19 days ago • 3 min read
Hi! Hallelujah! At last! After three months of back and forth with the printers (and setting up to print with someone else at twice the price), the Fiore Facsimile with translation is now working properly. Everyone who bought it in December has had their order re-run yesterday, so new copies are being printed and shipped. Now that they have been taken care of, we can open it up for new orders! This book reproduces the Getty manuscript in its entirety, in full colour, and as close as possible...
26 days ago • 1 min read
Hi! It’s been an odd couple of weeks since I last emailed. For some reason I’ve completely stalled on the Dagger book (From Medieval Manuscript to Modern Practice: the dagger techniques of Fiore dei Liberi, to give it its full title). But I am making actual headway on a revised, rewritten, and expanded second edition of Swordfighting for Writers, Game Designers, and Martial Artists. If you have any questions for me to address in the book, or suggestions, or requests for it, please go to this...
about 1 month ago • 2 min read
Hi! So you made it through the launch-process winnowing, well done! All in all, the launch sequence for Von Baumann triggered 59 unsubscribes, which is about normal- the average number of unsubscribes per newsletter email is about 5. And 116 people chose to click the ‘don’t send me any of that German wrestling stuff!’ link, thus avoiding the temptation to unsubscribe altogether. Hurrah! Other than the excellent folk who chose to buy the course, my favourite response to the launch was this,...
about 2 months ago • 4 min read
Hi! Last June I flew to Kansas to shoot Fiore dagger plays with Jessica Finley. While I was there she asked if we could also shoot a course on Von Baumann’s wrestling plays, because they formed such a handy mini-system. A great introduction to German wrestling, and also useful to broaden the education of Fiore scholars. She had helped me with the Abrazare (Fiore’s wrestling) course the previous year, so she knew what it Fiore covered- and what he left out. And she thought Von Baumann’s...
about 2 months ago • 1 min read
Hi!I’m back from Helsinki, having taught a couple of seminars for Gladiolus School of Arms. It was lovely being back in the salle! We did a day of Syllabus Form (longsword), and a crash course in Capoferro’s rapier. Lots of fun. The Form covers a huge amount of material when you start to unpack it- enough that it comprises most of the content of my Advanced Longsword book (the Farfalla di Ferro and the Cutting Drill take up most of the rest). I don’t believe in teaching choreography and...
2 months ago • 3 min read
Hi! Fair warning- this is the beginning of a launch sequence. Which means a pile of emails in your inbox over the next week or so. If you’ve been on my list for a while, you’ll know that it’s sadly necessary to send out a sequence of launch emails to generate course sales. This is just because people need reminding. I avoid making the emails too fancy because I don’t want to persuade anyone to buy the course. If Medieval German Wrestling: The Twirchringen of Von Baumann taught by Jessica...
2 months ago • 2 min read
Hi! I’m actually writing this last week, as I’m dashing off to Helsinki on Monday 13th, for seminars at the weekend (18th and 19th). So, greetings from snowy Finland! On New Year’s Day I went into my shed to sharpen a scraper, and while testing it for sharpness cleaned a patch of something off my bench top. This lead me to dress the bench. For non-cabinetmakers: dressing the bench means planing it flat, something you need to do every now and then because wood changes shape over time, and it’s...
2 months ago • 5 min read
