Old Indonesian dagger for comment
 

Hi All

Just picked this up today is it Sumatran/Aceh :confused:

http://cgi.ebay.com/19thC-Eastern-Ho...QQcmdZViewItem

Lew

It looks like it is Lew .
Nice simple functional piece .

Yep, it looks like a good rencong. Nice find ;)

Hi Lew,

Definitely a good buy: blade seems to be in good condition and with a traditional scabbard including inked decoration!

I'd guess that the hilt is made out of waterbuffalo horn but better have a close look... ;) BTW, no cracks on the hilt? If so, be especially careful not to let it dry out too much (many horn hilts have split due to shrinkage).

Regards,
Kai

Simple and elegant.

The traditional knife of the Aceh people.

Steve

Functionality without to much embellishment/decoration ....my sort of knife..
well done Lou

A good rencong from Aceh. A very nice piece. Congrats!

congrats, this rencong is in a very good condition. Beauty :)

The dagger arrived today here are a few pics.


Lew

A nice rencong. You may have already seens this from Barbara Leigh's book on Aceh crafts "Hands of Time"
Acehnese say that the rencong takes the shape of the invocation, "Bismillaah In the name of God, the merciful and compassionate."

According to Drs. Syamsuddin and Drs. Nur Abbas of the Department of Education and Culture in Aceh, the component parts of the rencong can be likened to individual letters of the formal Arabic script huruf gundul, literally bare lettering, of the phrase Bismillaah

The hilt of the rencong is in the shape of "ba"
The decoration at the base of the hilt is "sin"
The blade's shape is "mim"
The shape of the metal parts at the top of the blade is "lam"
The base of the scabbard has the shape of the letter "ha"
Together, "ba, sin, mim, lam and ha" make up the world, "Bismillaah"

Very nice example and a good deal, too. This was a good post on the UBB forum on these, explaining the grip and "L" shaped appendage well. Scroll down to Tom Kehoe's posts. His silat teacher is in the SF area and very respected.

http://www.vikingsword.com/ubb/Forum1/HTML/000746.html