Where Swashbucklers Go for Gear That’s on the Cutting Edge

Six-year-old David Swatton has an easy time putting together his Halloween costume.

One visit to dad’s Burbank emporium, The Sword and The Stone, and the deed is done.

Imagine wandering into the dressing room used by the knights of King Arthur’s Roundtable and you have an idea of what Tony Swatton’s shop looks like.

Swatton is a medievalist who specializes in weapons and armor. His clients come from the nearby movie and television studios.

Steven Spielberg used a Swatton-made hook for the title character in “Hook,” and Peter Pan’s sword was also a Swatton creation.

Michael Jackson wore some Swatton armored boots when he hosted the wedding of Liz Taylor to Larry Fortensky. The boots, along with Jackson and the newlyweds, made the cover of People magazine.

Swatton is now at work creating something that is, by his outlook, practically modern; a Bowie knife for a film called “The Alamo,” now in pre-production with an independent film company.

USC’s Tommy Trojan even has a new sword and restored helmet, thanks to Swatton’s creativity.

Swatton says he got started on his path to the past by learning how to cut gemstones when he was 7.

“By the time I was 13, I was cutting stones for a Beverly Hills jeweler,” he swears.

Gems couldn’t compete with weapons once Swatton learned how the old swashbuckling swords were fashioned, but he is not interested in saying how he makes them. And he will not say where and how he learned.

He will say that at one point he joined the Society for Creative Anachronism, a group of medievalist folks who, when they get together, look as if they crawled out of the pages of Bullfinch’s Mythology.

“I belonged to that group for a while,” says Swatton, adding that his success more or less drove him out of the organization.

“Once I started getting a lot of work making things for movies, I priced myself right out of the ability of most of the members of the Society to pay,” he says.

His suits of chain mail start at about $1,200, and plate armor goes for about $3,000.

Chain mail, according to Swatton, is made by connecting rings into a body suit, while plate armor is a real covered-up look with armor head to toe. Swatton says making the plate armor is like building an armadillo out of metal.

Those who venture into the shop may be taken aback by the baby doll in the mouth of a stuffed bear head.

Or, by the sign that says “Shoplifters will be killed and eaten.”

Just a little bit of Swatton humor there.

When asked who could heist a full set of armor, Swatton thinks about it, then laughs at the idea of someone trying to wear it out of the store under his or her clothes.

Rhodes Skips Class to Practice Voodoo

It’s hard to catch up with Cal State Northridge English professor Jewell Parker Rhodes these days. She’s taken a sabbatical from her classwork to promote her first book, “Voodoo Dreams.”

The book, which has gotten thumbs up from everyone from Kirkus Reviews to Whoopie Goldberg, is no dry, academic probe of a foreign religion, but an engrossing, personal and involving story about a strong, proud woman who could perform miracles, including making something of her own life.

“Rhodes eschews literary aspirations in favor of steamy, violent interludes worthy of a bodice-ripper. Melodramatic yet mesmerizing, it effectively synthesizes the twin themes of female and African American empowerment,” said a Publisher’s Weekly review.

Rhodes, by phone from Pittsburgh where she had just come from a book signing, says the book was not a fun summer project that just tumbled out onto the blank pages. “I had to grow into the story of Marie Laveau,” she says, adding that her first manuscript was turned down.

When asked why she persevered, in the face of that first rejection, she said, “I made a promise to myself and I didn’t want my daughter to see me back down.”

She said that she first came across a reference to Laveau years ago in a book on Creole cooking and that as an African-American and a feminist she was intrigued by this black woman thriving amid slavery and oppression.

“Once I saw her name and started thinking about her, I kept seeing her name everywhere. I was convinced she was haunting me,” says the 39-year-old author who is also a wife, mother of two and a distinguished educator.

During the seven years she has been at CSUN, and at the University of Maryland before that, she has received several honors, including a National Endowment for the Arts Award in Fiction, the Yaddo Arts Colony Fellowship and the California State University Distinguished Teaching Award.

Rhodes has been Visiting Allan K. Smith Professor of Language and Literature at Trinity College and has served as fiction writer in residence for Georgetown University’s Summer Writing Conference.

Rhodes says the idea of doing a book about Laveau fermented for about five years before she started setting it down on paper. “I traveled to New Orleans to find out more about the city and about Marie,” she says.

“Marie Laveau is still fairly well-known in that area, but not so much outside of Louisiana. I was interested in the offerings left at Marie’s tomb,” she says.

Laveau was a larger-than-life figure whom folklorists seem to agree was a hairdresser and a Roman Catholic, who, after marrying Jacques Paris who later disappeared, called herself the Widow Paris.

Rhodes says she was fascinated by the way in which this Roman Catholic could transform herself into a follower of voodoo.

Rhodes says that while she was writing about Marie and her voodoo rituals, she came up with a few rituals of her own.

“I could only write when I had everything laid out just so on my desk. I kept a small artificial rose on my dresser. I had to have room to pace and a window to stare out of.

“At some point, I became a nocturnal writer, almost unable to write during daylight. And, there were times, when I had tucked my daughter in bed, and my husband was asleep and the moon was high, when I swore Marie was there, peering over my shoulder as I wrote.”

In the author’s note at the end of “Voodoo Dreams,” Rhodes shares some personal notes with the reader.

“As I uncovered bits of Marie’s past, I became more and more fascinated by her. I wondered how a woman who had been a Roman Catholic could transform herself into a voodoo follower.

“I began to see Laveau as a heroic character and, drawing on memories of my grandmother, I wove into Laveau’s story a matrilineal line of knowledge and power. Gradually, Laveau’s quest for rediscovery of self became a metaphor for a larger process of rediscovery of lost traditions and lost vision.”

This Flower Child Is Getting Honored

Dorothy Bolt of Lancaster has been a volunteer at the Antelope Valley Poppy Reserve for more than 20 years.

Somebody noticed.

She has been given a Superior Achievement Award by the Department of Parks and Recreation.

Only six such awards have ever been given, according to Vic Maris, superintendent of the Mojave Desert sector.

Bolt, well-known for her community service, has also done good works with the Lancaster Woman’s Club and the Quartz Hill Woman’s Club, but during wildflower season, Bolt bolts for the poppy fields every spring.

Overheard

“Now that Beavis and Butt-head are on later, we can expect older morons to be emulating their heroes.”

--Man talking to another man outside of Woodland Hills movie theater.