is this a common dagger?

[fernando]

can anybody help ?
the solid brass handle is more on the fantasy side, but the blade is very real, much too operational for a decoration or even a ceremonial piece ...
although not much handy, due to the snakes in the grip, it has a weapon's balance, heavy and lethal. amazing that the two little ( human ?) figures, are purposely of different sizes, as pretending to be male and female ...
the blade is 7 1/2" long, the total length 12 1/4".
anybody in this forum familiar to this type of knives ?
thanks

[Tim Simmons]

What a really great piece, it would look good with the rest of my collection!!!I would certainly think it was very rare.Really interesting.Tim

[tom hyle]

Not familiar in specific, but the brass work looks Western or central African. The snakes may connote a royal household connection in some nations, but this is not universal. The asymetric pommel is interesting. Male and female figures together are common on African art, BTW. Probably a ritual piece for use in ceremonies ("dances"), would be my guess, largely due to the symbolism and uncomfortable(?) look of the handle. I note the snake is leaving the woman, aproaching the man; meaning unknown. Usually more wildly shaped and decorated blades are seen on Yoruba/Beni and Akan (Ashanti, etc.) prestige swords, but for religious ceremonies one could expect different rules and symbols for different gods, regions, etc.......

[Tim Simmons]

I do not think you could find another one tomorrow very easily.Tim

[tom hyle]

And, you know, I don't think there's any close relation, but check the square-section brass handle with y-shaped pommel.......

[Tim Simmons]

At a push I think I might be looking at an animal head, though what I see as a mouth could just be damage.Tim

[fernando]

i wonder what kind of animal is represented in this pomel shape... the picture is faded, but apart from the visible mouth, there are eyes and nostrils engraved.

[Tim Simmons]

So it is a mouth.I love these ritual or magic pieces.Tim

[Jim McDougall]

I agree with Tom on the possible regions for this clearly ceremonial knife.
The figure shapes seem to resemble material culture from West Africa regions from the Yoruba sphere. The snake is an important factor in the folk religion of these regions, specifically the python, as is ancestor worship. While I am not near my references at the moment, the hilt shape may be of these regions as well.
The significance of the male and female figures may have symbolism as seen here as described. It is interesting to note that in certain African cultures, especially Saharan such as the Tuareg, there is specific matrilineal heirarchy observed.
Daggers such as these, I would speculate, may be used in a votive sense as well as possibly ceremonially cf. the 'phurbu' in Tibet, used to symbolically drive away demons etc. or to recreate some desired action.

Best regards.,
Jim

[Conogre]

I would have to say that it's a VERY rare piece as, to the best of my knowledge, this is the only one that's ever been presented in this forum and I've cetainly never seen one like it offered for sale before.
The possibilitues are almost limitless, from purely ceremonial to sacrificial to homage.
As noted, the snakes are highly important in many African cultures (and other continents as well), particularly among the Yaruba nations(?), while the combination of brass and male and female, immediately makes me think of the Dahomey that even had an Amazon army of sorts, known as "The Kings Wives" that were known to be crack fighters.
While the shape is not like anything I've seen in knives from Benin, the male/female and animals crawling to and away from the figures is often seen on the back of some of the larger swords and often conveys a story or meaning.
In my opinion that's a piece that you might want to take special care of.
Mike

[Conogre]

For whatever it's worth, on page 64, figure 54-1 of Spring's "African Arms and Armor", the top weapon shown is a dagger with a long, pointed blade and a snake guard.
It's not a match by any means, but it does show that the blade style isn't out of the question for a Dahomey origin.
Good luck....I like it.
Mike

[fearn]

As with everyone else, my first impression was "African, but I've never seen anything like it before." My second impression was, "the weird things about this are a) the rigid triangularity of the blade and handle, which has a European flavor, and b) the primitive nature of the hilt figurings. They're kind of crude, and it looks the decorations could have been made almost by two sets of leather punches."

The second impression suggests cult work, but my suggestion is that we expand our possibilities to the African diaspora, especially Haitian Voudou and Brazilian Candomble. Either would account for the Yoruba influence (twin figures and snakes), and also a European influence (geometry). I've never seen anything like this out of Haiti or Brazil, but couldn't they be possibilities?

I'd also suggest that the knife might be relatively recent 20th century stuff.

Fearn

[Tim Simmons]

I do not think it recent work and I still want one.

[Conogre]

My money says Dahomey and if you ever decide to throw it away, toss it owards Florida!!! LOL!
The simplistic figures are very tyically African, by the way, even out of wood, with very few tribes doing extensive brass work....that's actually much more difficult to achieve than it would appear and quite well done.
Mike

[fernando]

Hi Fearn
Let me learn.
On what basis do you sugest this blade is recent 20th stuff ?
Is it for the one only picture, or are you familiar with this pattern ?
Having you such an eye for fake blades, i consider i am luky this time you didn't sugest this one could be bought at Atlantic Blades ( this the name ?). I had spent an hour cleaning it, first with penetrating oil and after with soaked sand paper 360. Some crust points remained. So the dark shades, the steel texture, the little failures in the sharp edges, the irregular edge shape lines ( sorry for bad lexicon ).
This knife has cost me 65 dollars. Hardly a drugstore would sell a blade replica with such intrincate "antiquing" for such price.
But inevitably i tend to accept yours or any other members expert opinion as, for example, i ignore yet this knife possible age.
Humbly.

[Federico]

May not be the most helpful of comments, but anyone else see resemblence between the hilt of the knife and a flinlock rifle stock? I know since I have a smaller screen size, when I first opened this post, without reading the title, I had thought it was going to be a rifle for discussion until I scrolled more to see the blade. Anyways, just a little .00001 cents to stir the pot so to speak.

[fearn]

Hi Fernando,

No, that was 100% intuition, unencumbered by the thought process.

Well, not quite. I wasn't thinking Atlantic Cutlery, although if I wanted to fake it, that's where I'd go for the blade. I could easily believe that it was a European or American trade blade, mounted (somehow) on that handle.

No, with the closeups of the filemarks, it could easily be hand made. Or it could have been badly cleaned with sand paper or some similar scouring material. Since there are scratches on the handle, I suspect that might have happened.

Tim could be right: it could be older than a century. However, if it's been kept in a tropical climate, especially if it's been kept in a leather sheath, then the crap on the blade could build up pretty quickly. That might be true for the patina on the handle as well. I just don't think it's over a century old, mostly because it doesn't have a heavy rust patina and the handle isn't a corroded mass either.

Another thing that was bugging me was that it MIGHT be a short tanged blade brazed onto the brass handle, which to me seems very 20th century (as I said, this is unencumbered by the thought process).

An alternative suggestion would be that the handle was designed using lost wax, and then cast around the blade tang. I think they could have gotten away with doing that without melting the blade, but I'm not sure. The evidence favoring this interpretation is that the spots on the snake and the scallops on the handle look like something from a leather tool. These would be easy to make in a wax cast, harder to do in brass, and they don't look hand scratched to me, somehow. Again, leather stamps might argue for new world origins, I think. You can buy them from Tandy leather, but I don't know if they're readily available in central Africa...

Conogre could be right as well about Dahomey. The reason I suggested the African Diaspora is that it's pretty evidently a primarily religious item, and the twins-and-snake design certainly reaches into the New World. The crudity of the work also suggests that someone made it specially and personally, rather than hiring a professional smith. If it were made via lost wax, this is even more true, as wax is pretty easy to carve, and those figures are pretty crude.

More information on the formation of the hilt might help, at least to settle how it was made. Was it cast in one piece, or brazed together, for instance? You can tell that by determining how the blade joins the handle, and how the figures are attached to the handle.

I don't think we're going to settle the origins any time soon, unless someone knows an experienced santerista or voudoun who'd be willing to take some guesses about the origin and purpose of the item.

It's certainly neat though.

Fearn

[Conogre]

I enhanced the photo as much as I could and my suspicion is that the hilt was indeed cast whole and onto the blade....brass and bronze, by the way have substantially lower melting points than iron or steel and were commonly cast onto steel blades, particularly in Africa.As to the crudity of the figures, human shapes are almost always highly stylized on African pieces except for those made in the past 20-30 years, after heavy exposure to western art.
VERY similar faces, for example are seen on the "ribs" or "spokes" that connect the blade to the haft in Songye and Nsapo axes.
As to the blade, you're forgetting one other possibility as to why it wouldn't be much more rusted if it was older than late 19th century, that being that it could have still been in use if it was a highly revered piece.....many tribes to this day are still highly animistic in their religions, having withstood Christian and Muslim influence for centuries, even closer to the original root beliefs than bastardized slave religions like Voodoo.
Often ceremonial pieces are of an heirloom nature, handed down from father to son or mother to daughter, while many prestige or status pieces were buried with the owner.
Mike
ps...for those of you that know me, don't go into shock.....I'd also be careful about more cleaning and highly suggest that you don't use sandpaper on it any more.
My own personal feeling is that you may well do unintentional damage that will both make it harder to ascertain more facts as well as decrease the value.

[tom hyle]

I see the gunstock resemblance, now that you mention it, and I'm quite unconvinced that's a mouth' it looks like a sword fell on it or something to me. Is it on both sides? I don't see any eyes or other facial features; only the edge loops. Those loops along the edges of the handle display some variability, and so seem handmade. The handle would be lost-wax cast directly to the tang, which is fairly common in Sudanic and sub-Sudanic Africa. The small rounds on the snakes may be made by a punch, which would not be a neccessarily modern tool, but were more likely cast in place; old African castings are not usually reworked after casting except for repairs of flaws or damage and usually some polishing.

[Conogre]

Tom, if you look VERY closely at the opposite corner from the "mouth" you'll see a tiny round eye and likewise, if you look very closely right next to the "mouth" you'll also see a tiny round "nostril" hole where it appears to be rounded over slightly.
I'd be willing to bet that this is repeated on both sides, is it not Fernando?
To animistic tribes almost all animals are sacred, with exceptional species even moreso........if this is from Benin, then in all likelyhood it's a stylized giraffe.
Mike

[Tim Simmons]

[IMG]http://[/IMG] I risk being a naughty boy posting this pic.Here we see two snakes and two people, this piece is at least 18th century and from Burkina Faso,I think it helps to see it.When does recent begin? 1895, 1900, 1905, 1910, 1915 and on.African work suffers from this tag more than others.The thing is that it is a nice rare piece and obviosly not new.Tim

[fernando]

while i digest all these lectures, with intense consultations to the diccionary ( my english is very limited ), here is a set of pictures on the hilt fixation, that i had already prepared.
i know the use of sand paper is a crime... i beg some tolerance, as it was heavily soaked sand paper "360", a very soft one.

[fearn]

Thanks Fernando!

I'd say the handle is pretty definitely cast (via lost wax) directly onto the blade--you can see that in the imperfections in the way the brass meets the steel. I'd also say that the figures were cast directly with the handle, not brazed (welded, but with brass) on later.

The one thing that's bothering me is the total lack of corrosion on the brass. There are a couple of ways to get this: either it's been in a temperature controlled setting, it was cleaned (possibly with acid--I've done this by accident and boy does it take off patina and corrosion ), or it's a relatively new piece. Or all of the above.

Considering the relative lack of bubbles, sprues, and other signs of casting, whoever did the cast did a pretty decent job, I think.

Hi Tom,

One thing to clear up is that I was thinking that whoever made it stamped the designs onto the wax master, rather than onto the finished metal.

Fearn

[fernando]

right, Conogre.
a giraffe ! the question i've put in the first place, but i think i didn't get myself understood . yes, a pair of eyes and nostrils,the head back, the mouth shape ! a giraffe. right. even a neck can be assumed, and its designs, as well as the eyes, nostrils and snake spots might have been post punctionned.
the patina evidence prevails ... most of the glowing parts are due to my phrenetic cleaning sense ( must be a trauma ), aggravated by my forgetting i am a forced left hander ( i've lost the right one ), and things don't come so brilliant.
any more macros, just tell. i can not miss this learning so much in a glimpse.