This sword was designed by William Morris as a model for the mural paintings in the Oxford Union in 1857. It was made for Morris along with a helmet and suit of chainmail by a blacksmith near Oxford Castle. Edward Burne-Jones described the episode at Oxford that led to Morris commissioning the props in John William Mackail’s ‘Life of William Morris’: ‘For the purposes of our drawing we often needed armour, and of a date and design so remote that no examples existed for our use. Therefore Morris, whose knowledge of all these things seemed to have been born in him, and who never at any time needed books of reference for anything, set to work to make designs for an ancient kind of helmet called a basinet, and for a great surcoat of ringed mail with a hood of mail and the skirt coming below the knees. These were made for him by a stout little smith who had a forge near the Castle. Morris’s visits to the forge were daily, but what scenes happened there we shall never know’
