Wooden daab blades at the Smithsonian

[Mark]

Here is a sample of the other main reason from my latest visit to the Smithsonian (when I examined the controversial katana-style Thai daab).

There is a collection of 34 wooden blades, ranging in size from a few centimeters up to about 59 centimeters. They are full replicas of blades, with proper dimensions of blade, tang, spine, etc. (or at least as close as one can expect to come in the softer medium of wood). The shapes are quite fantastic, with the larger ones showing the most unusual of the shapes. Some of the larger ones had writing on them, which I attempted to photograph with mixed success.

These were donated to the Smithsonian by the Siamese government after the Louisiana Purchase Centennial Exposition in 1903, along with many other pieces, and I assume that they were displayed in the Siamese Pavilion.

I am hoping that our Thai colleagues can shed some light on these mysterious items. Two possibilities that occurred to me were (a) that they are models actually used by smiths for customers to choose what style blade to have made, and (b) that they are models meant purely to show the variety of Thai blade styles, perhaps made specifically for the exhibition. The Natural History Museum on-line catalogue seems to be down at the moment, but I will check to see if there is any detail in the accession record, which I neglected to check while I was there.

[Mark]

Here are details showing as best I could the writing on some of the blades.

[Mark]

I had the provenance wrong on these. Many of the edged weapons in the Smithsonian collection came from the Louisiana Purchase Centennial Expo, but these were not among them. Below is the original accession card, showing that they were collected by Rev. C.E. Eckels and accessioned by the Smithsonian in 1898.

[PUFF]

Blast!!!.. I 'm about to go to bed. But your pics might yield me another sleepless night

Fisrt of all, please accept my sincerely thanks for sharing these precious pics. And please turn on Thai encoding in your browser.

The inscription 's in old words. Many are not in used.

Petchaburi is a province name, 80 miles south of Bangkok

มีดเง้าปังโตดำไทยปลายเจ๊ก is a polearm blade (Ngao/เง้า/ง้าว, Naginata style) with Thai (ไทย) handle (ดำ/ด้ำ/ด้าม) which, in this case might refers to either blade body, pole or tang) and Chinese (เจ๊ก) end/tip (ปลาย)

ระดิงหัวเสียบสวน : Totally no idea for ระดิง but my expert friends might heard it. หัวเสียบสวน might refer to its tip
หัว/Hua/head,tip
เสียบ/Siab/push
สวน/Suan/ adv. against, n. garden

มีดตอกกลาง is the easiest one, central style rattan shredder
มีด/mead/knife
ตอก/tok/n. rattan
กลาง/klang/central

น้ำวน means whirlpool, I have no idea, refer to tip shape, perhaps.

IMHO: these are models for one who was tried to archive styles of Thai knives. Again, this collection 's very valueable for us. Many many thanks for sharing.

[Mark]

My pleasure!

Thank you for the translations. I made fairly detailed measurements and individual photos of the larger blades, and of a couple representative small ones. I will post the full pictures and measurements of the ones with the writing which I posted here.

I plan to create a page on my web-site dedicated to this little collection, with all the photos and measurements that I took. Seeing the whole blade will probably make the descriptions make fore sense ("whirlpool" may refer to a whorled protrusion near the tip, as seen, for example, on the middle blade of the second photo).

[Mark]

Here are photos of the full blades of the details posted above. The measurements (in cm) are as follows (NB: "tip" spine width is taken 1 cm back from the tip itself):

First:
blade length - 46.1
widest span (edge to spine) - 9.3/10.1 (first/second "peaks" from tang)
tang length - 12.5
spine width at tang - 0.9
span width at tip - 0.2

Second:
blade length - 56.5
widest span (edge to spine) - 7.9
tang length - 11.6
spine width at tang - 1.0
span width at tip - 0.2

Third:
blade length - 32.6
widest span (edge to spine) - 5.1
tang length - 7.7
spine width at tang - 0.8
span width at tip - 0.2

Fourth:
no detailed measurements take, but it is small, about 16 cm in length

Fifth:
blade length - 38.2
widest span (edge to spine) - 9.5
tang length - 11.1
spine width at tang - 0.9
span width at tip - 0.3

[Mark]

Here is a group picture of the last tray of blades, to show the variety of shapes. to give an idea of scale, the blade at the bottom of this tray is the first in the series above, which is 46.1 cm long.

[~Alaung_Hpaya~]

Wow great set of shapes . I few of the shorter shapes are similar to utilitarian blades I've seen in Burma but many are quite weird and interesting .

[PUFF]

I forgot to translate the 3rd item, มีดโต้ลาว / Lao's chopper
มีด/mead/knife
โต้/Toe/Dao or chopper
ลาว/Lao/Lao people

Alaung_Hpaya, these designs are very regional and most of them are also weird to me. That because they are so utilitarian type that they rarely went to museum.

[PUFF]

A "Wall Catalog" in a folk shop.