Ma Clan Head House Cheolgeom, Hapcheon

This is an iron sword whose blade and tang were forged through repeated tempering, while the scabbard and hilt are made of paulownia wood. The cross-section of the blade is an isosceles triangle, one face flat and the other ridged like a mountain. A V-shaped hook is said to have been attached to the ridged face 7.7 cm from the tip toward the hilt, but it has since been lost through corrosion and careless polishing; only a raised trace of it remains. According to the collector's account, the sword was buried underground during the Korean War of 1950–1953 and became submerged, causing corrosion to the blade and tang — an account broadly consistent with the sword's present condition. The fact that one face of the blade is flat while the other is triangular, that a hook was attached, and that a ring was formed at the end of the hilt, all represent difficult feats of forging technique. The tang is relatively long in proportion to the blade, and its end bears a ring ornament from which decorative tassels could be hung. The tip is not sharply pointed but gently rounded, and may have been somewhat altered in shape through repeated polishing. The guard, the boundary section between the blade and the hilt, is fitted with a plain brass plate: on the unsharpened side there are circular perforations on both left and right, while on the sharpened side there is a single small square perforation on one side only. This plate has cracked and broken on one side, centred on a circular perforation. The scabbard and hilt are both made of the light wood of the paulownia tree; two pieces of wood of matching thickness were joined on each side and fixed with brass rings. The scabbard has four brass rings — one fixed at each end and two more spaced evenly between them — while the hilt has three, one at each end and one more in the middle. Some of these rings have been lost through careless storage. The sword's first owner is said to have been Ma Sun-sang, great-grandson of Admiral Ma Gui, who came to Korea as a Ming reinforcement during the Jeongyu War of 1597.

AI Translation

Where it is

Region

Hapcheon, Gyeongnam

Designation

Cultural Heritage Material · 문화유산자료