Thai priest knife
 

Picked this up a couple of weeks ago in here Chiang Mai. Handle is carved bone, worn smooth from use, knife is 25 cm long, with a nice heft to it. The scabbard is newer, might see if I can get a local craftsman to make a nice teak one for it, which is probably what it had originally. Really like this one a lot... the carved handled knives are hard to find in Thailand these days, I see lots of inferior repros but hardly any real ones.

A NICE LOOKING KNIFE. THE CARVING ON THE HANDLE AND BLADE IS UNUSUAL PERHAPS ITS A VARIATION FOUND IN CERTIAN ETHNIC GROUPS AROUND CHANG MAI. IT LOOKS LIKE IT HAS SOME AGE AND WEAR TO THE HANDLE AND BLADE, IS THE HANDLE IVORY?

Nice Meed Mor. Interesting designs on the blade and handle...some I've seen on the ends but not the middle flower one as much. But I have seen very little...

We think the handle is bone, it looks a bit too grainy to be ivory, however I'm not sure how to tell for certain. I have couple where I'm pretty sure the handles are ivory, most are bone, and some I'm not sure of. I'd like to find out, as I will probably need some documentation to bring any ivory back to the USA.

A few more...
 

Here are pics of some others that I've turned up. The first one is a ceremonial knife, the bone handle is carved with seven images of Phra Pit-da, which literally means "Lord no-see", the Buddha rejecting the world. It's possible that figure could originally have been a pre-Buddhist, animist origin. When I got this knife, someone had repaired it with an ugly aluminium bolster, so I had a local silversmith restore it with the correct silverwork, he did a perfect job of matching the scabbard, it turned out great IMHO.

The next two are more typical northern Thai hill tribe items, fairy old though, especially the one with the smooth ivory handle. The bottom one I think is bone.