Officer's Plug Bayonette (c.1690): Art, History and Details

Officer's Plug Bayonette (c.1690) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Used increasingly in warfare during the 1600s, the plug bayonet was inserted into the muzzle of a gun to make a weapon with a long shaft. This eventually made the use of pikemen in warfare obsolete as the new musketeer could now continue after having run out of shots.

Object facts

• Title: Officer's Plug Bayonette
• Date: c.1690
• Culture: England, 17th century
• Type: Arms and Armor
• Technique: steel serrated blade, brass, and wood
• Dimensions: Overall: 46.6 cm (18 3/8 in.); Blade: 30.2 cm (11 7/8 in.); Quillions: 8.6 cm (3 3/8 in.); Grip: 15.4 cm (6 1/16 in.)
• Collection: MED - Arms & Armor
• Department: Medieval Art
• Accession number: 1916.1659

A detail from the museum

The owner's or maker's mark on this blade is unidentified.

Collection credit

Gift of Mr. and Mrs. John L. Severance

Further reading listed by the museum

• Catalogue of Arms and Armour. Vol. 4, 17th to 19th century and a few pieces of iron work. [Boston, Massachusetts]: [Frank Gair Macomber], [1900-1915].
• Gilchrist, Helen Ives. A Catalogue of the Collection of Arms & Armor Presented to the Cleveland Museum of Art by Mr. and Mrs. John Long Severance; 1916-1923. Cleveland: The Cleveland Museum of Art, 1924.
• Fliegel, Stephen N. Arms and Armor: The Cleveland Museum of Art. [Cleveland, Ohio]: The Museum, 1998.

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.