Pillow Sword (c. 1650): Art, History and Details

Pillow Sword (c. 1650) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection.

The work and its context

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

The "pillow-sword" is so-named because of where it was kept. A sword like this one, with a straight blade and relatively simple hilt, would have been suspended above a headboard within arm's reach for bedside defense should an intruder attack while the household was asleep and vulnerable.

Object facts

• Title: Pillow Sword
• Date: c. 1650
• Culture: Italy
• Type: Arms and Armor
• Technique: steel, pierced; leather and wood
• Dimensions: Overall: 93 cm (36 5/8 in.); Blade: 77.8 cm (30 5/8 in.); Quillions: 9.5 cm (3 3/4 in.)
• Collection: MED - Arms & Armor
• Department: Medieval Art
• Accession number: 1916.1495

Collection credit

Gift of Mr. and Mrs. John L. Severance

Further reading listed by the museum

• Catalogue of Arms and Armour. Vol. 2, 16th century. [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.

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.