Mexican (?) Dagger for Identification?

[Conogre]

Hi all....here's another one that caught my eye at the wrong time.
The seller said he thought it was of Spanish origin, and I seem to remember seeing that these were Mexican (?), but can't remember for sure.
This one is 10" long, as opposed to 2"-3" minis which I believe is what stuck in my mind, with the hilt being pieces of dyed bone.
The seller specializes in African pieces, so neither of us could do more than speculate.....it was a fairly minor purchase, so no great loss, possibly best for steak tartar? **grin**
Am I correct or off by a mile?
Any information is appreciated, as always.
Mike

[Ian]

Hi Mike:

These are Brazilian in origin, I believe. You will find an example in Levine, listed as a faca da ponta, if I recall correctly.

I have a couple of these. Is the blade sharpened on this one? Mine are mostly non-functional and probably made for the tourist trade.

Pretty knife and well put together.

Ian.

[Conogre]

LOL!
Score three for Levine's, the khodme, the corvo (if it wasn't for tequila I'd never remember this one!**grin**) and now the faca da ponta!
Thank you Ian and no, not sharpened, so useless except for stabbing, although, due to its size, I'll likely sharpen it for my own personal use with a good T-bone!**another grin**
I've GOT to remember to utilize the Levine's...as the "real" weapons book collection slowly grows it's too easy to put that one back in the corner and forget it.
Mike

[Montino Bourbon]

Pardon my ignorance, but what is 'The levine's'?

[knife7knut]

Originally Posted by Ian

Hi Mike:

These are Brazilian in origin, I believe. You will find an example in Levine, listed as a faca da ponta, if I recall correctly.

I have a couple of these. Is the blade sharpened on this one? Mine are mostly non-functional and probably made for the tourist trade.

Pretty knife and well put together.

Ian.

Thank you Ian:
I have 3 of them as well and two of the pieces have an unusual cone-shape that is integral with the blade right where it joins the handle.The smaller one for some reason does not.
I also notice that the rings are of a different color on all the examples. Do you know if there is some significance to the coloring?
Thanks anyway for the ID.I am enclosing a couple of pictures.
Cheers
Ray

[tom hyle]

The pointed bolster is seen on Chilean corvo.

[Conogre]

knife7knut, cn I ask a question or two?
What are the sizes of yours and, are all three unsharpened?
From the photographs, the two larger pieces seem to be very well made and if not sharp, at least intendend to BE sharpened and look like nicely made weapons intended for real use.
I wouldn't be at all surprised to find out that what is usually seen on the tourist market didn't, like so many others. originally was a very real working knife for a certain class of people.

Montino Bourbon, I've got to find mine before I can give you the whole title, but it's a collector's guide book of knives and weapons from several years back that even gave the average going price at the time of its printing.
Mike

[tom hyle]

Oh, this is no decorator style; these are Mediterranean dirks; traditional dagger-knives found around the Mediterranean, from kodme to kard to Corsican stilettoe (not double-edged like the familiar Itallian one). Very very similar styles are still made and sold in Spain and Itally, as well as in a variety of former colonies, including, for instance, the Canary Islands and at least parts of S America (ex gaucho knives/daggers). The blades vary from thin wedge-section working knives to sabre-ground dagger blades with fullers and/or double-edged points of a type most familiar to modern people as bayonets, though in fact a traditional European dagger style from medieval times. I just saw some nice Itallian ones on a PBS travel show where they visitted a town known for cutlers. The lagnet/bolster may be a regional distinquisher; I've seen it on corvos, but also on Med. dirk styles like these, which may or may not be Chilean. The round handle is fairly typical of the Spanish/Itallian ones, as is the stacking. The globe pommel is one of two type ends, the other being simply tapered down to a pommel nut, though even so that is often a tiny globe.

[Rick]

Originally Posted by Montino Bourbon

Pardon my ignorance, but what is 'The levine's'?

Levine's Guide to Knives and Their Values (Levine's Guide to Knives and Their Values, 5th ed)

A good general reference , reasonably priced too !

[Ian]

Ray:

I think those older ones are nice examples of functional faca. As Tom points out, there is a similarity to the Mediterranean style of knife, and the stacked hilt is reminiscent of Canary Island knives (also a Spanish colony in the 19th C.) as well as the Chilean corvo, with a mix of bone and horn slices, iron and brass spacers. The conical bolster is seen on older Chilean corvo (as Tom has said).

Here are some archived pictures from previous posts that show Chilean corvo. The last one is a post-WWII tourist corvo in a more contemporary style. There are recently made military and civilian forms of the corvo also.

Ian.

[Ian]

and its the best one I've seen. This silver handled corvo comes in a red tooled leather sheath. The mode of wearing the corvo is illustrated in the picture of an officer in the 19th C. Chilean Army.

Ian.

[knife7knut]

Originally Posted by Conogre

knife7knut, cn I ask a question or two?
What are the sizes of yours and, are all three unsharpened?
From the photographs, the two larger pieces seem to be very well made and if not sharp, at least intendend to BE sharpened and look like nicely made weapons intended for real use.
Mike

Mike:
The photos were taken on a grid of 1" squares(my usual method to denote size;I should have stated that before)and yas all three are unsharpened.
They were obtained from 3 different sources over the years.The first was given to me by a friend who used to purchase military collections and dump everything else at flea markets and such.The other two were obtained at other flea markets ostensibly as letter openers.I don't think I paid more than a couple dollars each for them.
This person also had a large assortment of Phillipino and African knives that I acquired a few of including a couple of swords made entirely of water buffalo horn (obviously for the tourist trade).
Cheers
Ray

[Ian]

just finished on eBay.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...tem=6517209947

[Conogre]

Mine arrived today and, as suspected/predicted is unsharpened, something that will soon be remedied if it's to have any use as a SKOW (steak knife of the world! **grin**).
The leatherwork on the sheath seems likely to be Brazilian as well, making me suspect that these were likely the precursors to the Goucho knives before the fancy silver incarnation that we associate with them today.
If used as a working knife it would seem that the blades would be particularly nasty as a fighting weapon or an assasination type blade that could be used without anyone ever being the wiser until the perpetrator was long gone.
I suspect that here's a case where we are seeing the devolution of a weapon as opposed to the evolution that we normally think about?
Mike

[knife7knut]

Originally Posted by Conogre

If used as a working knife it would seem that the blades would be particularly nasty as a fighting weapon or an assasination type blade that could be used without anyone ever being the wiser until the perpetrator was long gone.

Mike

Mike:
I'm not sure that this type of knife would function very well as a fighter or an assassin's knife mainly because of the lack of a suitable guard or hand stop.On the other hand,that might go towards explaining why there is no sharp edge on them.The thickness of the blade might make it suitable for stabbing through heavy garments but with the force required to do that would almost make it mandatory to have some type of crossguard.
It really doesn't work very well as a letteropener either!
Cheers
Ray

[RobT]

I have collected these daggers for a number of years and had always thought that they came from the mediterranian area of north Africa. They looked to me to be a blend of southern European and north African design (sort of like a Canary island knife stretched out). I could never find any verification of origin however and now I know why. I should have been looking in that part of Africa that left the old world and headed west millions of years ago! Brazil, ho boy! To say I was a bit surprised is to put it mildly. I do have three questions however. 1) Was the dagger as it appears in this thread developed in the old world and carried to the new by Portuguese colonists or did it attain its final form in Brazil? 2) Demographically, who were the people that used the dagger? (A local car wash that I frequent is owned and operated by Brazilians. One of the men working there said the knife was used by Indians but I doubt this.) 3) How was the dagger carried? (That pen style clip doesn't seem very secure for external carry.) This last question might give a good indicator of the blade's intended use. If the sheath was designed for concealed carry, that fact and the lack of a sharp edge coupled with the formidable point speak in favor of a surprise thrust much in the fashion of a stilletto. I know that in my neck of the woods ice picks were used in this manner and they frequently had their handles shaved down for concealability. I don't think a cross guard would be needed because the base of the blade is deeper than the hilt so your hand would stop on that. Also, your fingers would find purchase in the swamped area just before the pommel. Does anyone know any Brazilian cops? If it was a weapon they would be able to tell us volumes about it. The only other thing I was able to find out at the car wash was that one of the women there said that her father gave her mother one of the daggers as a gift. This woman also said that they don't make the blades any more. One of my co-workers is also Portuguese and she said that she thought she had seen these knives but they were usually old and rusty and the hilts were usually broken.

[Conogre]

Now that you bring up the Portugese aspect, you may be more correct than you realize with an original N. African beginning.
Many people don't realize that Brazil is a source of some excellent antique African weaponry as a large number of escaped African slaves fled into the jungle and managed to create a mini-Africa that grew large and strong enough to fight off the Portugese slavers/priests and colonists for over 100 years.
I used the slavers/priests because the "Church" felt that the hethen savages were an affront to everything holy and actually pulled most of the strings that led to final major onslought and massacre.
Through their contact with the escaped Africans, some of the native Indian population from the region (also enslaved) also ended up with some surprisingly Africanized spears and knives, so don't automatically write off African weapons and weapons of African derivation from S. America, Brazil in particular.
Mike

[tom hyle]

I'm not sure where the idea is coming from that this is an African/African-related style; it's pure European, (there are African Mediterranean dirks, but they're different; see "kodme") and other than the corvos and the pointed bolsters, any of these knives could very simply be from Itally or Spain. If they are from colonies they are pretty much straight copies.
I personally wouldn't read too much into pieces being originally sold with unsharp edges; it's a cultural thing that happens in various circumstances; it comes and goes; it is especially common with military blades, but not limitted to them. It seems to be an industrial cheapskating/streamlining. The persistance of nonsharpness while owned by natives does something to say these are mostly vestigial/symbollic in modern times, as expected.
The type is a dagger-knife used for work, hunting, and self-defence. Usually in thrusting the pommel is placed against the palm, as with many guardless knives.
The "pen type" clip is a fairly old and traditional European thing. Some sturdy versions on swords (on guard or sheath), firearms, and axes will be on the back side, but most commonly it is on the front side of the sheath on blade weapons, and you can figure it out from there; the knife is worn thrust thru the belt with the clip engaged to the belt to keep it from sliding out. Sometimes these go with a "frog" but those are more usually "buttons" than clips. This type of clip has been popular on daggers (including "bowie knives") in the Americas, but is also popular in (for instance) Sicilly and Corsica (ie the former Kingdom of the two Sicillies).