Antiques Roadshow Hatchet

C

cityofthesouth

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Jan 29, 2014
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A friend was just down and told me to watch the latest episode of Antiques Roadshow. They run a little message during the show asking if anyone knows anything about the hatchet at the 18:45 mark. What I thought was interesting is the pins (or something) in the area which would be the poll - you get a good view of them at one point.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/roadshow/video/2015.html

It appears to be really well made for being something that would have been hand forged.
 
Cute little fella! The appraiser was liberal in guessing what it would fetch too.
 
This link goes to the part about the hatchet:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/roadshow/season/20/omaha-ne/appraisals/17th-c-axe-with-fruitwood-handle--201503A21

201503A21_th.jpg
 
The head and handle was pinned together through the poll, or appeared to be. I had never seen that before.
 
The head looks more Eastern European than Mediterranean. Looks Czech, Ukrainian, or Polish in style.
 
Obviously a Dane axe........ for a very short Dane......


Cool piece.



I'm always amused that everything is an Indian war axe, or scalper of it is a knife.
 
Were this to actually be able to sell for $5K +/- I can see artificially aged Chinese knockoffs with Bali hand carved handles starting to show up at auction soon. Without a mark or a stamp people can only guess where and when something was made!
 
Unfortunately, the name of this thing escapes me at the moment (edit - flashback - the "fokos"). To me it looks like the traditional Northern European hiking/mountaneering axe. Originally it would have had a much longer and heavier shaft ending with a spike on the end. It was an early form of ice/hiking axe.

Examples of fokos axe"
fokos003_DCE.jpg

podhale-45.jpg


n2s
 
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not2sharp said:
Unfortunately, the name of this thing escapes me at the moment. To me it looks like the traditional Northern European hiking/mountaneering axe. Originally it would have had a much longer and heavier shaft ending with a spike on the end. It was an early form of ice/hiking axe.

n2s
Click to expand...

Are you thinking of a ciupaga/fokos/valaska?
 
Yeah, you guys are thinking it would have been on a longer handle? I was kind of wondering that when he pointed out the little hook - that perhaps with a different handle, it would have had a function. Which kinda makes me wonder where the speculated date comes from. Probably some info that didn't get passed on to the viewers in there somewhere.

If you pause at 1:20 (in Steve's link) it sorta looks like the handle is oversized toward the front of the eye. ETA again; or it's the original handle cut down ... and then carved?
 
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I watched that yesterday inbetween commercials, and was almost gonna start a thread about this myself.
I think it's very interesting as wall art, but I don't like it as a tool ( not that I'd try to use it ) because the poll is way to fat for its size and all axes with triangular eyes are ugly in some way.
 
It's a very cool little hatchet and if it is from the 17th century it's has survived wonderfully. I wouldn't try to guess it's exact purpose but we do like our small forest hatchets these days so maybe it was meant for the belt to simply have while hunting or other endeavors.
 
I'd be pretty surprised if it was actually that old. Regarding the front lug on it, I've seen that on a bunch of Slavic axes and sometimes it's flush against the wood and sometimes it's not, and this holds true even in cases when the axe is drawn in a schematic rather than in photographs. As such I have no idea what it's for, but it does seem to be a feature of some kind or another as manufacturers would be unlikely to complicate their forging process with its inclusion if it didn't serve a purpose.
 
Can some one, please, take a shot of the knife in the video and post it? Apparently, such videos are too dangerous to show in some parts of the world, or something.
 
FortyTwoBlades said:
I'd be pretty surprised if it was actually that old. Regarding the front lug on it, I have no idea what it's for, but it does seem to be a feature of some kind or another as manufacturers would be unlikely to complicate their forging process with its inclusion if it didn't serve a purpose.
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In W.L. Goodman's book The History of Woodworking Tools(c1964), page 34 it shows an illustration of an axe with a hook on the lower front like the Roadshow axe has, and this illustration is from the Charpente section of the famous Diderot's Encyclopedia which was published in the mid-1700s.

If anyone actually looks at the tools of this era they will find that it was common to adorn them with some decoration. Hand saws, hand planes etc. can all be found with scroll work pierced into the metal, heads carved in the handles, and other extra ornamental features. Ornamentation was simply phased out as capitalism and industrialization took over in the 1800s.

13151535_1016979475059599_7632857226577979909_n.jpg
 
DocT ^^^ the above image is from the show. The guy in the video says that he thinks it is 17th century and Italian.
 
gben said:
In W.L. Goodman's book The History of Woodworking Tools(c1964), page 34 it shows an illustration of an axe with a hook on the lower front like the Roadshow axe has, and this illustration is from the Charpente section of the famous Diderot's Encyclopedia which was published in the mid-1700s.

If anyone actually looks at the tools of this era they will find that it was common to adorn them with some decoration. Hand saws, hand planes etc. can all be found with scroll work pierced into the metal, heads carved in the handles, and other extra ornamental features. Ornamentation was simply phased out as capitalism and industrialization took over in the 1800s.
Click to expand...

I don't think it's just ornamentation in this case. A modern Ukrainian axe and tool manufacturer shows both a "carpentry axe" and a "military axe" with the feature. I doubt that axes of military pattern would have bore the feature into the modern era if it was purely an embellishment.

ZESTAWY%204.jpg
 
The majority of makers (even centuries-old Basque trade axes that folks have queried about on here) have some form of positive identification on them and I would think embellished versions even more so would feature something.
 
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