Sala delle Tre Spade:
Sala delle Tre Spade (“Hall of Three Swords” or SdTS)* celebrates, promotes, and practices traditional fencing, chiefly with fioretto (foil), spada (epee), and sciabola (sabre), but with forays into older, extinct arms like rapier, smallsword, and bayonet. We also actively seek to build ties with other, similar schools and groups in our region (the PNW) and beyond.

Check out SdTS’ related program: Capitale Escrime Historical Fencing, in Salem, Oregon: https://wordpress.com/view/capitaleescrimehistoricalfencing.wordpress.com

*pron. SAH-lah delleh Trrrey SPAdah. The term sala (It.) or salle (Fr.) is the customary word describing a fencing school. Scroll down for how we chose the name.

Sala delle Tre Spade is a registered non-profit with the State of Oregon and Insured

What We Fence:

Current Instruction (as of Jan. 2023)

SMALLSWORD: we look mostly to French sources, among them de Liancour, L’Abbat, Girard, and D. Angelo.
RAPIER: Neapolitan School as taught by Marcelli and Pallavicini
SPADA/EPEE: a) north Italian, but with some Neapolitan elements (Del Frate, Masiello, Rossi, Barbasetti; for Neapolitan we look to Rosaroll & Grisetti, Parise, etc.); b) French, mostly the Reglement of 1877 & 1908
FIORETTO/FLEURET: a) French, along the lines of the Reglement of 1877 & 1908; b) north Italian (we rely on the Radaellian corpus, especially Barbasetti for foil)

Suspended Subjects [owing to medical issues, the following subjects are suspended. I hope to offer them again down the road; students already enrolled in sabre are unaffected by this change, save that their instructor will be fencing left-handed]

—SABRE: sabre is north Italian. The Radaellian corpus informs most of our sabre curriculum (e.g. Del Frate, Masiello, Pecoraro & Pessina, and Barbasetti)
—BROADSWORD: late Insular tradition as codified by McBane, Hope, Page, Roworth, and Angelo
—BAYONET: for bayonet fencing and bayonet vs. sabre we look to a variety of sources, some Italian, many French, and some English and American. All hail from works written between 1750 and 1917.

Where we Fence:

SdTS is comprised of fencers from every background, some Olympic, some historical, some SCA, but all of us united in a love of fencing.

We meet either at the Fernwood Grange, Newberg, when its available, or, at the few covered areas in town. For the latter, this is–at present–to be announced as we lost the spot we’ve been using for the past few years.

Call or email to find out where we’ll be.

Fernwood Grange:

Individual Lessons:

The best way to learn, SdTS offers individual lessons in 30 minute and 1 hour blocks, time and days to be determined with the student. As of NOV 2021 my schedule makes it more difficult to accommodate individual lessons throughout the week. I do my best to accommodate students, so if one is interested in individual lessons please let me know.

Group Classes:

Typically we meet as a group. This allows fencers to work with one another and gain experience facing different opponents.

Class Format: most classes begin with warm-up and stretching, followed by drill, the lesson or lessons of the day, and for more advanced students bouting.

Why “Sala delle Tre Spade?”

Rapier (beginner, intermediate, advanced)

The school name is the Italian rendering of Salle Trois Armes and I chose it in tribute to the late Rocky Beach, instructor there, whose estate selected us for a non-profit donation. Our focus is largely Italian, but I wanted to honor him and the impact FCSTA has had on us—not only was Rocky’s club the first one I called home in PDX, but thanks to the generosity of Rocky’s estate a lot has been made possible—masks, jackets, gloves, foils, sabres, and some coaching equipment enabled us to offer kids classes to name only one example.

Rocky was a fixture of the fencing community in Portland, and in many ways helped build the city into the hot-spot it is for fencing, particularly Olympic fencing. This link provides a brief biography: https://fencingcenter.org/

*photos from Rocky’s memorial page and fb