When I first announced my last Kickstarter project, the restoration and reproduction of Meyer's longsword illustrations , I received a lot of feedback from folks who said, "Hey, this is awesome, but why Meyer? Why not an Italian? Why not Marozzo?" Thus, the seed was planted....

Last January, I went on a tour of Italy with a Meyer Freifechter Guild instructor, Christopher VanSlambrouck. Upon arrival, I found myself in the wondrous Guardia de Croche Center of Studies. I had brought the owner of the collection a set of the Meyer longsword prints. He held them next to the originals from which they had been made and said that my prints looked better than a perfect print from the original woodblocks over 400 years ago. He then handed me his copy of Achille Marozzo's Opera Nova and suggested that it would be a good project for me.

At the end of our Italian tour, we had a chance to catch up with Guy Windsor. Over coffee, we chatted about this project and he very graciously offered to send me high resolution images of the copper plate illustrations that Achillie Morozzo's son had made for a reprint of Opera Nova.

I have a Bachelor of Fine Arts from The University of Iowa. My coursework focused on the art history of Europe from 1500-1900, specifically the history of printing. In my studio classes, I discovered a particular talent in style mimicry and digital restoration and manipulation. Outside of college, I have pursued a career in freelance graphic design and illustration. Four years ago, I acquired my first letterpress and have since been producing letterpress prints and manuscript reproductions under the imprint Draupnir Press. Once I began studying fencing, it became apparent that there is a clear need from researchers, collectors, and martial artists for high quality reproductions of historical images as research and pedagogic resources.

I also did the Meyer longsword thing. I totally rocked it. That's why I'll totally rock this one.

First, I opened up the scans in Photoshop and then spent many hours using my historical knowledge and artistic skill to take away extraneous data and replace missing data. Extraneous data comes in the form of discolored paper, bleed from the ink on the other side of the paper, creases and bends of the paper, and places where ink was applied too thickly to the original woodblock. Data that needs replaced is a result of insufficient ink on the original woodblock. The ink differential varies greatly from print to print depending on if the ink application was heavy, light, or inconsistent.

Once this Kickstarter is funded, I’ll send the files off to the engraver. As soon as I have the necessary supplies, I will begin the process of printing, painting, packaging, and shipping.

For this project, I chose the images containing only single handed weapons. Upon completion, I will continue on to the second of the five projects based on the illustrations from Morozzo's Opera Nova. The second project will cover the longsword illustrations. The third project will cover the halberd & grappling section. The fourth project will be the restoration of the side sword with shield or cloak section. The fifth project will take all of the illustrations from both the 1536 and 1568 editions and combine them into a book where each illustration is annotated, describing the significance of each of the fighting poses and techniques as well as the imagery used in the backgrounds.

The goal of this project is publicly provide the illustrations from the 1536 in the form they were originally made. Since they won’t be bound in a book, I’ll be able to print them on beautiful Lanaquarelle paper with Vanson ink. Each print will be labeled with a title or descriptive summary, its number in the print run, and the Draupnir Press imprint. If you so choose, these prints can be hand painted in historically accurate colors.

These are the guard images that you can chose from:

And these are the three large illustrations:

If you have already pledged $12 or more, you may manually increase your pledge to add rewards. Just increase your pledge by the amount of that reward. I'll send you a survey at the end of the campaign to figure out exactly what you want.