The Collection
A great number of visitors, young or young at heart have already admired worlds largest collection on fencing and duelling. Engravings, statutes, paintings or drawings from famous, or less known artists, who followed man endlessly at fighting, duelling or fencing. Let us name some; Meissonier, Regamey, Stizoda, Schreibner, Daumier, Townsend, Rowlandson, Hogarth, Hokusai, Pieter Lastman etc.
In every room of the museum we find different weapons: duellingswords, daggers, hunting knives, military sabres, courtswords, foils, the first electricals, rapiers and even free-masons swords, from all over the world.
The lord of the manor, Maître van Oeveren, ex-international and former national trainer of several countries, welcomes the visitors and guides them through the collection, telling them anecdotes of people like Clémenceau, Boulanger, Deferre, Churchill, Paton, Mussolini or Heydrich. They all had one thing in common; fencing!
Fascinating stories of famous worldchampions, who very often were his oponents, some left their weapons or jackets at the museum.
“I have collected anything on fencing”the maître explains ” for exemple, I have, for children, figurines, comics, fairy fencing stories, Tom and Jerry, Goofy, Snoopey and all other cartoon celebrities fencing, duelling or other”
Going through the five expositionrooms, one finds “Women and Children in fencing”, “political duels”, “fencing in advertising”, “fighting in the theatre or on the filmscreen”(Grace Kelly, Gina Lollobrigida, Sophie Marceau, Errol Flyn, Stewart Granger, Basil Ratbone, José Ferrer, James Mason, Antonio Banderas, Jean Marais, Gérard Philip), pamflets, brochures and books. Whatever book or film, from Dumas to Sabattini, Shakespear to Conrad, any cloak and dagger story is here to be found. In the library several hundred of books in a dozen different languages, from the 17th century up till our days.liek.
