Anglo-Indian Knives

[Ian]

Two things come to mind when I read "Anglo-Indian knife." The first is the knives made in England in imitation of Indian knives. The Rogers company, for example, made several such knives.

The second is the knives made in India during the late 19th and early 20th C aimed specifically at European markets and British people who liked to travel to exotic places. There is a particular style that stands out in this regard. The most common of these is a knife that has a curved blade of polished steel with "Pure Steel," "Victory," and occasionally "Kirpan" reverse-etched at the forte. The hilts comprise small plates of MOP with interspersed straight or zig-zag black lines made of jet. A brass guard, ferrule and pommel are present, with a brass chain often linking the pointed pommel to the cross guard. The hilt is of full tang construction, with a screw thread on the end of the tang that takes a nut to hold the hilt in place. These knives originally came in a red leather sheath with a brass chape and locket. In my experience the chape tends to get lost first and later the lockets.

A less common variant of similar construction has a karud style blade of T-section, usually with a fuller, and a hilt of MOP with interspersed black jet, a brass ferrule and pommel, but no cross guard or chain; the hilt is again of full tang construction.

I have shown a small sample of these in the pictures below. Despite being mainly "tourist" knives, they are generally well made and attractive knives. There are quite a few of them around, so they are neither rare nor particularly valuable. I think the karud style is less common, and indeed knives of this form seem to be offered for sale at quite a high price these days.

The accompanying pictures illustrate the two styles and some of the marks found at forte. Close up views of the hilts show the MOP and jet construction.

I would be interested to see any other variants of this genre that folks have found over the years.

Ian.