Ancient knives

Joined
Jun 14, 2007
Messages
835
I wanted to show you guys this website I found. They sell ancient artifacts. All kinds of cool stuff there. They have knives from the bronze age! That you can actually buy! I have been looking for info on this kind of stuff. I want to try to make some reproductions of the first metal knives and maybe use the designs to inspire some original art. Its to bad living in the U.S.A. we dont have musseums to go see this stuff in person. Im saving my pennies to buy some of this stuff.

http://www.ancienttouch.com/

Hows this for "classic custom knives"
 
Wow, that's a coool site. Especially for anyone who is into medieval (and earlier) weaponry (like me) Gives some good ideas for projects too :)

I think I'm gonna try on of those migration era axes...
 
Broken tips ?? I guess ancient knife users are like so many today -prying things with the knife !...Steelshaper "we don't have museums". IIRC The museum in Detroit had an arms and armour collection.NYC has it's world class Metropolitan Museum of Art . Ther must be others too.
 
Chicago Art Institute has a permanent arms and armor display (currently under renovation) and there is also the Field Musem of Natural History.

I would also suspect that somewhere in Michigan there has to be a good display of Copper Culture artifacts.

You might also consider getting on the mailing lists of several museums so you can know when specific traveling exhibitions are put on display.
 
Well I have been to a few museums in the U.S. but I have never seen anything like this in any of them. I live at least a three hour drive from any major city so it is hard to pop in to check stuff out in any major museums. Most vacations I have gone on I make a point to find museums. I am sorry If I sounded like an idiot saying there are no museums. What I was getting at is this history did not take place here. I have seen tons of Native American stuff but no Earlyy Iron age stuff. My wife who was born in Germany and studied art in San Antonio was telling me, and this makes sense to me, European museams have far more ancient eurasian artifacts than we do. Though I do enjoy studying Native American stuff I am not native. I have been to Makinac Island and to the fort tons of times.

Mike getting on the mailing lists of some of the bigger museums like Detroits would be a good idea.

Thanks all for your cooments.
 
Thanks again Mike It looks like a good book, maybe worth saving up for.
Again I am sorry if I do a poor job explaining myself. It seems to me that there is not much info on this subject. At least I have not found it. Like i said I live in the middle of nowhere. There are no major colleges or museums near me. I wish there was. Living in a small town has its drawbacks but at least I can leave my doors unlocked.

Fortunately for me there are sites like this one where information is shared so readilly.
For example I had no idea what wootz was until I found this site.

I would like to learn as much about the origins of metal weapons as I can. If anyone else has any tips on where I can look let me know.
Thanks again.
 
Will, you're not failing to explain yourself. I think you can do some research online, though it doesn't let you see anything really well of course. You can find things here and there about "antiquities collections" in museums and galleries. here are a couple you can poke around in:

http://www.louvre.fr/llv/commun/home.jsp?bmLocale=en
http://www.britishmuseum.org/ search "weapons" there are 196 hits

here's another place that can be cool to poke around http://www.therionarms.com/ and a portal to ethnographic weapons http://www.vikingsword.com/ethsword/index.html
Medieval Europe http://www.aiusa.com/medsword/vmframe.html

Hope you find something of interest... :)
 
Thanks again Mike. Those are some good links.
It can be a real pain trying to find any usefull info. There is so much garbage out there that it can be a pain to sift through it all. Do a search for Viking sword and theres hundreds of websites trying to sell the same crappy sword. I do have a few good books on medieval swords. On very good book is; Records of the Medieval Sword by Ewart Oakeshott. It has about 250 pages of detaild pics of medieval swords. The swords are mostly dated and include explanations of where they were found and when. They are also catergorized by type.

What I found great about the site I posted the link to is they sell these ancient artifacts. So not only can you look at them but you could buy them. Some of them are not in great shape but the prices seem good to me. It would be cool to hold a weapon used 3000 years ago!

Like I said above, so much of the info out there is either not correct or far to vague. I would like to be able to go beyond the cliche idealized Viking sword. Not to disrespect people who make Norse weapons. Kevin Cashen does a great job for instance. For a long time that was all I wanted to do. But I dont want to be always in the shadows of others. So what do I do?

Dam it I should have stayed in college:) Personally I am only trying to find a new direction to go in.

Thanks again for all the suggestions everyone.
 
Back
Top