Tenegre with kampilan blade?
 

My last adquisition, a tenegre with kampilan blade, the blade Im not sure is forged, maybe a modern married between antique hilt and modern blade?
Thanks
Carlos

Interesting piece. Not impossible, though not usually seen. They are close to the Moro lands and it is not unknown to have a Visayan hilt with a Moro blade (ex: I have a small tenegre hilt with a Moro gunong blade).

Thanks for your opinion¡


QUOTE=Battara]Interesting piece. Not impossible, though not usually seen. They are close to the Moro lands and it is not unknown to have a Visayan hilt with a Moro blade (ex: I have a small tenegre hilt with a Moro gunong blade).[/QUOTE]

Also your piece does not look "married" to me, but the blade seems to fit into the slot perfectly. They were made together.

I fixed the picture to show what I mean.

Hello Jose,

can you narrow down the origin of the hilt for either place/group or time? It does seem more roughly carved than most of the antique examples I remember.

Regards,
Kai

Hello Carlos,

I'm not convinced that the blade really originates with any Moro group. The tip configuration seems to exhibit slight deviations from the norm and also the blade cross section near the base looks different from antique kampilan.

Regards,
Kai

Not being a “guru” of Indonesian/ Philippine weapons, my comment is general in nature : I am suspicious of the even layer of red rust all over the blade. A bit fishy, IMHO.

Good questions. So a few things:

1. the blade is from Mindanao. Both the Maranao and Maguindanao tribes use it (as well as Lumad groups).

2. I have seen various levels of carving quality on tenegre hilts. This one could simply be a fighter. I would place this around Panay Island in the Visayas, above Mindanao Island.

3. I would take a guess that this could have been made during the turn of the 20th century.

4. Remember that my modification of the picture was only to show where the blade went into the hilt. It is not natural, so the rust looks more red than true brown, which it is in reality.

5. In the original pictures of the blade, I can see different color hues of patina/rust that correspond to the different laminations in the blade. Thus it is an old and not a recent blade. It also matches the patina/rust on the steel ferrule on the hilt.

6. I cropped and enlarged my modified picture for you Kai.

7. I will also add that there are some straight sections on the hilt that originally had silver or brass overlay pieces.

Interesting blade. I'm pretty sure this was not made within the Moro culture. Every Moro kampilan that I have seen has a particular geometry with regard to the "spike" on the terminal end. The base of that spike is always precisely in the middle of the blade. That symmetry can be confirmed easily with kampilan. Because both the spine and edge are straight (albeit diverging from the hilt), a straight line connecting any two points that are midway between the spine and the edge can be extended to define the midline of the entire blade. That midline passes through the base of the terminal spike on Moro kampilan. I have confirmed this arrangement on dozens of Moro kampilan, in fact every one that have found or for which I have a photograph, so I believe that it is a fundamental design feature on Moro kampilan with spikes. [We have discussed this before on this site--perhaps on the old UBB forum that is now defunct.]

The blade above does not show this feature. The base of the spike arises closer to the spine than the edge. Therefore, I would say that this kampilan was not made within the Moro culture. The T'boli make a smaller kampilan with a spike that is called a kafilan and does not usually conform with the Moro geometry described in my first paragraph. For that reason the example shown here is most likely T'boli in manufacture. That would fit with the shorter than usual blade, and its slimmer thickness that Kai has referred to. The Bagobo may make similar blades but I have less information about that.

As already noted, while not rare, it is unusual to find a Panay hilt on a kampilan style blade. Remember that there are many Visayans on Mindanao, and that the largest city on the island, Davao City, is mostly made up of Visayans. The T'boli are located in the south-eastern part of Mindanao, so it's not a great stretch to believe this is a T'boli-Visayan hybrid.

As far as age, I agree with earlier assessments that this one is probably from the first half of the 20th C.

Ian

Ian thank you for your knowledge. I was not aware of this feature of Moro kampilan.

In this situation then, I would agree with your T'boli attribution of the blade. Again for clarity sake, the T'boli live on Mindanao and do a lot of trade, and there was a lot of trade between the Visayan Islands and Mindanao.

Really hard to tell from the pics, but the blade does not look forged to me. Looks like it was cut out of a bigger piece or possibly stock removal. I do not see a distal taper, thickness looks uniform.

Hi mross.

I can see what you mean, but I think this is probably a well forged blade. The T'boli are excellent smiths and their blades are sought out for their durability and sharpness. The lack of distal taper probably reflects the slimness of the blade to start with. Some Moro kampilan show little distal taper also.

Cleaning and etching of this blade would provide more information.

Ian.