10 Questions with Patrick Bratton

Patrick Bratton is the owner of Sala Della Spada in Carlisle, Pennsylvania and specializes in Italian military sabre and dueling sword, circa 1600-1900. CombativeCorner founder and fencing instructor Michael Joyce recently had the honor of bringing Patrick down to Winston-Salem, North Carolina for a workshop in dueling sabre. Directly afterwards, he agreed to answer both our students and readers questions in our popular interview series, “10 Question.”

Without further ado….

What brought you to an interest in fencing, and what brought you toward the Italian methodology in particular?

From a very young age, I was interested in swords and knights. As a young kid, I made armor out of trashcans and plastic flower pots and “fenced” with my dad. In the early 1990s, I got more serious training in a Korean karate style that had some weapons, and also Olympic fencing, the SCA shortly, and some other things. It was…