The Escutcheon Rapier

Alicia Adams
Aug 6
3 min read

This beautiful keyhole-themed rapier incorporates traditional decorative techniques into a beautiful, characterful fencing tool.

With a long ricasso and extra weight to the cup in the form of the decorative plate, the sword is blade-dominant, with a central mass which pulls the rotation back down the blade. The result is a sword that works best when wielded with intention, fiercely holding the line, and readily moving into the attack.

The hardened cup provides all-around hand protection, stabilised by the "finger rings" that spiral out from the quillon block and attach to the cup at 45-degree angles. It features an engraved steel plate to its base, inspired by Victorian escutcheons, which are the decorative plates around keyholes. This theme is continued in the notches of the ricasso, evocative of a key entering the lock, and the doorknob-inspired pommel.

Please see our pricing structure for an idea of what a similar sword would cost.

∴ Specs ∴

Total length: 127cm
Blade length: 114cm from cross
Blade width at base: 2.2cm
Grip length: 8.5cm
Grip and pommel: 12.5cm
Quillon span: 27cm
Weight: 1230g
Point of Balance: 14cm from cross
Right-handed
Blunt edges & rounded tip
Fencing safe flex

∴ Notes ∴

The hand-forged and heat-treated cup, quillons and pommel are blackened to a matte finish. The quillons are made from long, flat-section bars, that flare out to the terminals. The hardened cup is stabilised by outward-spiralling "finger rings" that attach via silver screws.

The base of the cup features a satin-polished plate, inspired by Victorian escutcheons, and featuring a keyhole-shaped slot, as well as hand-engraved details. The ricasso of the blade continues the illusion of a key entering a lock, with notches representing the teeth of a key.

The oak grip is wrapped in steel wire, with Turk's head knots to the top and bottom, and the pommel is inspired by a Victorian doorknob, with a flattened sphere shape and hand-carved lines circling it horizontally.

∴ Gallery ∴

∴ A Patient Lock ∴

The house is unnervingly quiet these days. Not like it was when he was alive, for the quiet of those days was always punctuated with little sounds - a typewriter tapping, a teacup clinking in its saucer, the pages of a newspaper turning. No, this quiet is different, deep and dolorous, as if the house knows that its master has passed.

Dust motes drift in a slant of afternoon light, catching on an ornate steel plate at the end of the hall. A bloom of steel leaves that had enthralled and frustrated you since childhood, and the dark, inviting keyhole at their centre.

"Grandpa's door," you always called it, though whenever you asked the old man about it, he would simply mumble, "that's not for you to know about," and change the subject. You would sit outside it for hours, trying keys from the backs of old drawers, hat pins and pocket knives, all to no avail.

But now you stand before it with a yellowed envelope in your hand, your grandfather's spidery handwriting spelling your name across it, and the solemn weight of a key inside. It was all that you were left in the will, and though your mother thought to console you, you could not have imagined a greater gift.

You shake the key from its paper casing, black with age, its notches deep and irregular. You hold it up in the shaft of sunlight, and you like to think that the little mouth of the keyhole gasps to see its counterpart after so many years.

The steel plate seems to gleam brighter as you approach, and your heartbeat quickens. At last an answer to the mystery you've pored over all your life. The key slides in with an unsettling smoothness. There’s a pause, a held breath, before you dare turn it.

You savour the click of long-untouched mechanisms slotting into place: a iron-deep resonance that rattles through your bones. You reach your other palm to cup the doorknob and twist.

The door resists at first, like a begrudging beast rousing itself from sleep, then it begins to give way. A thin draft breathes out into the hallway, carrying with it the scent of dust, old wood… and something else.

You step closer.