Ethnographic Arms & Armour - New Purchase: A tumbok lada

My family background on my father's side is fine art cabinet making, & that inheritance goes back at least 5 generations. As a child & teenager, I learnt a lot about the intricacies of this craft, but when it came time to choose a career I chose a very different path. Still, throughout my life I have had friends who do still work as makers and restorers of high quality cabinet work.

One of my longest friendships was with a gentleman who has now passed, but at his best was reckoned to be the very best in his preferred division of fine art cabinet work. He did a lot of restoration & repair, some was early Australian Colonial, some was from English & European artists of bygone ages.

Something this man once said to me has stuck with me, & it has influenced the way I think about a lot of things, not only fine art cabinet work:-

"---craftsmen have always made items of various qualities, there has always been low quality rubbish produced, just because something is old that does not mean that it is worth putting time into it to return it to use. The age alone of something does not add value:- rubbish is always rubbish, and quality, even if made yesterday, is always quality ---"

I have paraphrased the above, I do not remember the precise words & their order, but what I have written is very definitely the message his words conveyed, and it is pretty much the measure that I apply to my collecting of sharp pointy things.

If I apply this concept to Hugh's dagger, based upon the photos posted, what I believe I am looking at is a relatively recent knife & scabbard, but with an old ivory hilt, I also believe that I am looking at an item of better than usual quality.

In brief, a good quality knife with recent blade & scabbard & a nice old ivory hilt, in my own opinion, totally worthy of collection.