Serbian Kraishnik or Beduin Shashka?

Marc · 9th July 2007, 09:05 AM

glad to have been of any help.

If you ask me, one of the most valuable resources of these fora is the fact of having so many people "in the field", with their own pool of "local" knowledge, so frequently unavailable to the international community just because no-one ever bothered to put it in a format accessible to us all.

Now, the questions...
Yes, 19th c, definitely, starting at some point in the first third and spanning to its end, when the colones were lost (1898). And, although I said these are normally attributed to the Philippines, truth is that I feel more comfortable with the label of just "colonial". I haven't seen any proof these were exclusively form the Philippines, this and the fact that there are some typologies of regulation machetes that are traditionally attributed to the Caribbean colonies, make me think that the exclusive attribution for these pieces could have been more a "consensual" thing (like a "these are colonial, the Caribbean ones are different, so these have to be for the Philippines" thing. Such is the way many typologies are born in the collectors world, I'm afraid...) than something really sustantiated. I have to check this more deeply, I know where to look at...

On the other hand, I would say that the "arab" influence in Spanish weaponry ended up much earlier than the time that we're dealing with here. I don't think we can look for such parallelism in this particular case... but the curveball can in fact be more curved than one might think. The Toledo Factory and the Spanish blade industry in general provided a lot of edged materila to the North-, Center- and South- American countries. Surplus and retired material, from Spain itself and from these countries ended up as trade goods about everywhere, with Africa being a specially good market, with Spanish presence in the actual Morocco being quite strong until mid-late 20th c.

9th July 2007, 09:05 AM	#12
Marc Member Join Date: Dec 2004 Location: Madrid / Barcelona Posts: 256	glad to have been of any help. If you ask me, one of the most valuable resources of these fora is the fact of having so many people "in the field", with their own pool of "local" knowledge, so frequently unavailable to the international community just because no-one ever bothered to put it in a format accessible to us all. Now, the questions... Yes, 19th c, definitely, starting at some point in the first third and spanning to its end, when the colones were lost (1898). And, although I said these are normally attributed to the Philippines, truth is that I feel more comfortable with the label of just "colonial". I haven't seen any proof these were exclusively form the Philippines, this and the fact that there are some typologies of regulation machetes that are traditionally attributed to the Caribbean colonies, make me think that the exclusive attribution for these pieces could have been more a "consensual" thing (like a "these are colonial, the Caribbean ones are different, so these have to be for the Philippines" thing. Such is the way many typologies are born in the collectors world, I'm afraid...) than something really sustantiated. I have to check this more deeply, I know where to look at... On the other hand, I would say that the "arab" influence in Spanish weaponry ended up much earlier than the time that we're dealing with here. I don't think we can look for such parallelism in this particular case... but the curveball can in fact be more curved than one might think. The Toledo Factory and the Spanish blade industry in general provided a lot of edged materila to the North-, Center- and South- American countries. Surplus and retired material, from Spain itself and from these countries ended up as trade goods about everywhere, with Africa being a specially good market, with Spanish presence in the actual Morocco being quite strong until mid-late 20th c.