Non-American Bowie-type knives

Chui said:
.......a very English looking Bowie :thumbsup: 😎
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My first Bowie and nothing as salubrious as your and other offering here but I said I'd post it up anyhow.
If you were to guess what date would you place it Chui? I know it's conceivable it was made last Tuesday but based on the style?
 
ed_is_dead said:
My first Bowie and nothing as salubrious as your and other offering here but I said I'd post it up anyhow.
If you were to guess what date would you place it Chui? I know it's conceivable it was made last Tuesday but based on the style?
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- looks like it's been made from a file, so possibly later than you imagine..? Very hard to say. As for style, could've simply been copied.

With some of these knives - no makers mark - you can sometimes get a better date reference/idea from the sheath..!
 
ed_is_dead said:





No makers mark, it was a rasp or file, stag handle, 16 inch, 700g and I'm guessing Sheffield. Needed a lot of work to make sharp but sharp she is!
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Nice-looking beast. It does give me British vibes, but probably not Sheffield. Given the style and natural patina, I'd guess it was made somewhere between the mid-to-late 1800s and early 1900s, though it's hard to know without a maker's mark. Given the hilt materials and format and the sheath style, I wouldn't be surprised if it turned out to be an Anglo-Indian piece (made in India during the time of the British Empire). Check out my post on page 2 of the current thread, where I shared a similar knife I suspect to be Anglo-Indian, plus a two-part article by David Johnstone and a video by Matt Easton on the subject.
 
Though this one is perhaps a bit more genre-bending, I figured I'd post it here given some of its features and its probable provenance. It's a bowie-style dagger I procured recently through a friend in Spain, with the Spanish motto La muerte antes que la deshonra ('Death before dishonor') etched on the blade:

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As far as I can tell, the bowie connection goes beyond the blade shape (which is reminiscent of many of the bowies that were made or imported in the US in the 1800s). Based on the floral motifs of the etching, the scalloped German-silver guard, and other knives I've seen with the same motto, I believe this knife was made in Sheffield, England. However, unlike the other Sheffield-made knives I've seen with the phrase in question, which were most likely exported to Mexico, this one was probably exported to Spain. This is of course consistent with the fact that that's where I got it, but also with the handle style, which was pretty common in Spanish 19th- and 20th-century hunting knives (cuchillos de monte).

If anybody else has a different idea about the knife's provenance, I'd be happy to hear it!
 
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In my last post, I said I believed the "La muerte antes que la deshonra" knife, or at least its blade, to have been made in Sheffield, and recently I've encountered several examples online that seem to confirm this hypothesis. Below I include a couple more pictures of the knife in question (1-2), as well as pictures of some of the other examples I just referred to (3-5):

1.
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2.
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3.
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4.
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5.
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Picture 3 shows a knife by H. C. Booth & Co featuring the same Spanish motto, though with a different design. Picture 4 shows a Manson knife with the same blade pattern, hilted in a hollow nickel silver handle, as was common during the American Civil War period (middle). Finally, picture 5 shows another hollow-handled knife by Manson, with very similar (though not identical) floral motifs etched on the blade, but with the phrase The gold seekers protector. Thus, the knife from my previous post, or its blade, may well have been made by Manson [edit: or whoever's knives this company used to import into the US] for export to Spain, although it's hard to say for sure since Sheffield makers copied each other all the time.

Anyways, figured I'd share in case anybody find this of any interest :).
 
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screened porch said:
It was in the '80s.
If I neglect this Windlass Steelcrafts dirk blade much longer, it will be in "as excavated" condition.
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It's just occurred to me this morning that I can turn a handle for it and then flatten the haunches.
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"Turn" a handle, in the woodworking sense? If so, I'd love to see the result!
 
There is nothing about the size, shape, materials, or style which is unique to the Bowie knife. Knives like this have been made for many centuries all over the world. What we refer to as a genuine Bowies are those knives made during the 19th century to satisfy a customer demand for a knife like Jim Bowie’s. It wasn’t a knife innovation, it was a marketing movement.

n2s
 
not2sharp said:
There is nothing about the size, shape, materials, or style which is unique to the Bowie knife. Knives like this have been made for many centuries all over the world. What we refer to as a genuine Bowies are those knives made during the 19th century to satisfy a customer demand for a knife like Jim Bowie’s. It wasn’t a knife innovation, it was a marketing movement.

n2s
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I'd agree with all of this. Did I give you any impression to the contrary? That's why I used the phrase bowie-type knives in the title and adopted Peterson's rather broad definition just as a starting point in the OP.
 
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