Random chosen pictures of the Oriental beauties

[wolviex]

Hello friends!

A few days ago, our Forum Friend RSword asked me about posting pictures of Oriental arms from Museum where I work. I admit, I said I'm planing few krises by now, but... how could I refuse. So I went to one of the magazines and I have choose few different Oriental objects, which were at the hand. Hope you will have fun watching them. I won't comment them, because your knowledge is far greater than my about these sort of things. If you will have any questions anyway, I won't promise, but I will try to answer. And I know, some of the pictures are shown in "Jens Nordlune way" - only a part of the object. You can ask me about the pic of the whole thing, but I can't promise to fulfil it, while these are the only pictures I have at the hand right now . Some of them you may know from catalogues.
RSword - I hope this will fulfil your expectations

Ragards!

part 1:

[wolviex]

part 2:

[tom hyle]

Thanks; worth waiting for the pictures to load. What is inside the animal's mouth on the back side of that axe? We've seen a similar (though I don't think zoomorphic, or more stylized anyway) one where there was an open hollow space there; on this one there seems to be some sort of structure between the jaws.

[wolviex]

Sorry for the size of the pictures and your time you spend on waiting until pictures will upload.

Tom: there's a devil's head in the animal's mouth

[tom hyle]

Interesting; thanks.

[RSWORD]

Michel,

Thank you so much for posting all those beauties. You chose a great variety of items with many unique features. Just a couple to comment on:

1) The first helmet pictured is fantastic. What great workmanship in this parade helmet and illustrates the endless variety one can find from these regions of the world
2) The S Indian enamaled sword is great! The enameling is typical of Lucknow workmanship and the hilt has a typical South Indian flare.
3) The lovely dagger with the gold or gold gilt mounts has a most interesting "lizard" attached. I am wondering what this lizard represents. A most unusual motif for what I am guessing is an Indo-Persian or Indo-Arab knife.
4) I really like the Caucasian saber. The "shamshir" hilted examples are not seen as often and the niello work is lovely. The blade on that one is great!

All the others are fantastic examples and the extra detail in the pictures really gives one a better "feel" than what you find in most pictures in books because they just do not have the space to allow for many close up pictures so one can study all the details.

Thank you for making my morning!

[wolviex]

You're welcome Rick

Everybody: please, feel free to comment, I would like to know more your opinions, while my knowledge about Orient is still not satisying.

Regards

[Radu Transylvanicus]

Pictures 7 & 8. Persian parade tabar zin (large war-axe) early Qajar Period (late18th – early 19th century) – Crescent moon shaped blade, with demon head (double dragon as probably a smaller head protrudes out of the larger one’s mouth normally but you can’t see it here) hammer-head . The flag (?! cannot find the vexiologicaly correct therm for the moment) has an Indo-Persian symbol: the surya ( the God Sun motif) in bass relief on one side and a mystical sufi scene Persian miniature painted on the other.
Its is the only exemplar so far I know decorated like this ! Rare stuff and again these Indo-Persian items are not part of the same outfit, however the vanguard (bazouband) and this tabar zin are a very a good pair perfectly fit to keep eachother company in a museum display!
Hey JENS, I would like to hear your opinion specially in this war axe, what do tyou think about the miniature and the age ? Isnt it amazing how on one side you see Persian art using the surya sun face also a classic Rajput emblem and the miniature on the side has much more Ottoman Turk than Mughal in style ...

[Rivkin]

Thank you very much for all the kind words, but I'm way over my head oftering the appraisal here, but:

a. Assuming that the sword is russian - Zlatoust, Tula independent makers are the possibility. The problem is that the signature is clearly in arabic (amal...), but russians used cyrillic or stamps (solingen stamps for germans working in russia, zlatoust stamps for zlatoust). Additionally their work was mainly designed for cossacks, not georgians, so it would be strange to see them making this sabre.
Additionally the produce of Zlatoust was considering vastly inferior to high end georgian makers until very late in XIX century.

b. Attached is a "khevsurian sabre" from Astvatsaturjan's book - as you can see it's almost idential to "mountain sabre" from Askhabov's book so it's no wonder we have all these problems in identification.

c. There are however some things in the motiff that look strange to me:
First of all - given attached three images of istambul-bik - first one is from this sabre, second one is transcauscasian istambul-bik, and the last one on the right is a dagestanian.

It seems that the one from the sabre is more transcaucasian. Zigzag pattern that is placed on the hilt and guard - it's also more of a georgian thing, like one on the shashka's blade (image attached).

Than as you can see - images on the blade have a mesh-like background - does it look similar to the zigzag pattern on the next attached image ? I don't know it looks somewhat similar to me.

Than 8-fold ovals on the hilt - this is certainly something very georgian - appears also on the khevsurian sabre in Astvatsaturjan p.343 (khevsurian sabre). Mjalhista's sun is much bigger and sometimes somewhat elongated in one direction.

Other elements of the ornament (Muchal-bik etc.) are also analogous to Dagestani elements, but different nevertheless.

I strongly suspect the origin of the blade being Tiflis. It's not even impossible that it was ordered by a wealthy Tsova-Tushin or Khevsur, remembering that khevsurian swords signed "Ferrara" used to cost 25 cows and up, this blade does not seem like being much more expensive than that. Some of mountainers acquired considerable wealth as a result of military actions, so it does not seem improbable to me.