African small sword id request

[colin henshaw]

My feeling is the item posted by Roland_M is a pure West African tourist item and the rough iron "stick" is a supposed to be a sword blade, but just made as quickly and cheaply as possible.

[Tim Simmons]

Colin if that is the case, I know the blade is rather like a giant hand made nail, why spend so much time on the scabbard??

[trenchwarfare]

The end of the scabbard is not shown. Does it have fringe like the hilt? If yes, it could be a riding crop. Or form of swagger stick. As stated. a throw back to colonial times. Almost all regions of the world incorporated blades into crops, and swagger sticks. But still, modern tourista.

[Iain]

Originally Posted by Tim Simmons

Colin if that is the case, I know the blade is rather like a giant hand made nail, why spend so much time on the scabbard??

Because the fancy leather work sells well, might be an answer? While the skill in metal work seems to have dropped off in the 20th century the leather workers do not seem to have been so effected.

Roland,

I think the main thing is if you enjoy the piece. Its quite clear from the photos that the leather work is not particularly old. The line begins to blur at times between something recent made for tourists and made for local use in these areas. At times it may well simply be a case of who buys it.

[colin henshaw]

Originally Posted by Tim Simmons

Colin if that is the case, I know the blade is rather like a giant hand made nail, why spend so much time on the scabbard??

The comment by Iain must be the correct reason, it makes the object both pretty and exotic looking. There seems to be a clear genre of these West African "made for sale" items.... spears with rough metal heads, tins with lids, walking sticks, batons and odd-looking daggers. They all seem to have the same wine coloured leather base with plaited leather-work in narrow strips. Occasionally bits of leopard or other wild cat fur is incorporated. Some of these "tourist" objects can be fairly old, even going back to the 1930/40's is my guess ?

But I also think its true to say that African tourist objects often derive from older patterns made for purely indigenous use and usually of a much higher quality (time and labour). The dividing line between tourist and indigenous use is often blurred and hard to define...

[Tim Simmons]

Just thought this is worth some follow up.

http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/showth...d=1#post187616