Indian axe?
 

picked this one up for the starting price, only bidder. maybe because it IS a stage axe. i seem to recall similar axes from the tribal areas of NE india, but cannot find them online. only info is the pics, and a indication it's threee feet long, and the weight at 1.3 kilos. thought it might be worth a punt...

anyone recognise where it might have come from, other than the prop room?
needs a bit of oxide removal & oiling.

thanks for any info &/or comments.. for good or ill...;)

My opinion - this is not the old thing. In addition, I can not remember such items with a "star". Although I will be glad if someone will show authentic old Indian ax, buyout will look like this :)

I totally agree, the 'battle axe' was primarily out of the picture as a combat weapon quite early relative to most of the array of other arms used in India. They did however become popular in bearing and ceremonial or court context. That being the case, in my opinion these often well embellished arms seem intended to impress, and in this case even a bit over done to almost 'theatrical' proportions.

reminds me of this one i found with google: described as an 1800 model bulova axe...

Something tells me that this is not a description of the collection of the Ethnographic Museum or the Museum of arms and armor :)

Oh yeah. This is an advertisement for the sale)))) I would not always trust what they write sellers wishing to sell an item ....

ah, well. i can stick it in my OOPs corner. ;) or re-sell it.

To echo a lot of the above comment: modern.

When they not advertised as "Medieval axe" or "Mid-evil axe", they often called "star farsha". If you want to look for more examples, "star farsha axe" might be the best search term.

interesting. that is definitely a copy of this axe. mine does not appear to be stainless steel, so assuming they copied something to come up with the star farsha stainless axe, this could be an earlier model that they copied. or did they copy an earlier real weapon?

Somewhere I have a book called "Axes of Power" ( do not recall the name of the author).
According to it, the definitive sign of a fighting axe is the wedge head. Flat ones are always decorative.

Ariel, are you referring to Axes of War and Power by James Gamble (2002)? I think that book is out of print now.

Ian.

Yup, that's the one. My wife rearranged my books, and I have to spend hours trying to find one...
They used to be in such easily understandable disarray... :-(((

It is a modern axe from India, the 'star' one and the 'sickle' one were advertised in pairs (sometimes described as 'Mongolian battle axes'), usually at the end pages of various magazines of the 1990's. Blades were highly polished carbon steel.

it arrived sat. p.m., oddly enough the head tapers in thickness from the back edge & the tangs to the front. the crescent is welded to the two tangs, still it is a match for those modern replica star farshas. the star reinforces the tangs. the welds sadly counteract that by weakening the blade/tang junction as they are not overlapped, likely arc welded. otherwise heavily built. will clean it a bit, oil it and proudly display it in the closet. would make a better weapon of i cut the axe part off at the eye, leaving the spikes & spear point which are substantially built. :)